


The Wreck of Doubt

by thepartyresponsible



Series: Shatter Together [4]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:13:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21787324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepartyresponsible/pseuds/thepartyresponsible
Summary: In the beginning, he haunts rooftops, wanders the skyline at night, puts himself where Red Hood is likely to find him.“Hey,” Jason says, the first time Clint sees him after the night they met. He pulls his mask off, and his hair falls across his forehead, black and curling, sweat-drenched at the roots. The grin he gives him could break hearts at fifty paces, and here’s Clint, like an idiot, standing at point-blank range.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Jason Todd
Series: Shatter Together [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1570099
Comments: 367
Kudos: 1217
Collections: Charity Hawktion 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Teeelsie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teeelsie/gifts).



> This fic was written for [Teeelsie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teeelsie), as part of the 2019 [Charity Hawktion](https://charityhawktion.tumblr.com/).
> 
> The title is taken from "Fistfight" by The Ballroom Thieves.

It’s not a regular thing, him and Jason. It’s not a _thing_ at all, and Clint keeps reminding himself not to think about it like that. It’s just that, every now and then, when he picks up a job in Gotham, he’ll check in with Jason, just to see him. And Jason never tells him to fuck off, so Clint keeps coming back. Because he never learns. Because, no matter how many times he’s taught, he still hears _You can stay_ as _Yes, please stay._

In the beginning, he haunts rooftops, wanders the skyline at night, puts himself where Red Hood is likely to find him.

“Hey,” Jason says, the first time Clint sees him after the night they met. He pulls his mask off, and his hair falls across his forehead, black and curling, sweat-drenched at the roots. The grin he gives him could break hearts at fifty paces, and here’s Clint, like an idiot, standing at point blank range.

God, he’s doomed.

“Looking for me?” Jason prompts, when Clint doesn’t say anything.

“Maybe,” Clint says, trying for cool. “Yeah,” he says, immediately afterward, because he’s not cool. He’s never been cool. Not in his whole damn life. He points at Jason’s helmet. “But, if you’re busy, I can--”

“Not busy anymore,” Jason says. It’s nice, that edge of interest in his voice. He sounds like he’s happy to see him. “Patrol’s over.” Jason gestures down at the alley, at a motorcycle waiting below. “Wanna get a beer?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, shoulders relaxing. “Sounds good.”

The next time he’s in town, Clint tracks down the bike and then waits for Jason to come back to it. The morning after that, when Jason wakes him up by working a line of kisses and bites from his collarbone to the edge of his jaw, he gets Jason’s phone number.

“Just call me, alright?” Jason says, when Clint stares down at the number, written out in bold sharp-edged handwriting on the back of a crumpled takeout receipt. “You’re too pretty to stand on street corners waiting for me. Someone’s gonna steal you.”

Clint rubs at his face to hide his blush and wishes he didn’t blush at all. He hasn’t seen Jason blush, not once, and the things Jason says should make _anyone_ blush. They can make Clint blush for days afterward. The things Jason says can send Clint’s blood running several different directions at once, and he tries not to think about them when he’s working. Or in public.

“Don’t be an asshole,” Clint says, but he folds the paper up carefully and slips it into his wallet.

Jason stares at him for a second with that pinched, skeptical look he gets whenever he hears something he doesn’t like. “I’m not being an asshole,” he says. “You’re fucking gorgeous. Don’t stand on street corners in Gotham after dark. That’s a good way to get less pretty real fast.”

“I’m gonna take a shower,” Clint says.

Jason sighs like _Clint’s_ the one being weird and difficult, but he climbs in the shower about two minutes after Clint, so maybe he doesn’t mind all that much after all.

Clint calls a few weeks later, and Jason answers on the second ring, with a short, unfriendly, “What?”

“Huh,” Clint says. “That’s how you answer the phone?”

“Clint?” Jason’s tone changes, drops to neutral. Or what Clint had _thought_ was his neutral, until he heard the way Jason greets other people. “Sorry. Didn’t know the number. Thought you were someone else. You in town?”

“For a couple days,” Clint says. “Gotta work tonight, but then I’ll be around.”

“Okay,” Jason says. “You gonna stop by after? I can leave the door unlocked if it’ll be late.”

“In Gotham?” Clint says. “You’re gonna leave the door unlocked in _Gotham_?”

“Sweetheart,” Jason says, with a laugh in his voice, “anyone ballsy enough to come after me in this town isn’t gonna be stopped by a fucking deadbolt.”

He doesn’t mean anything by it. Clint remembers Jason called someone _sweetheart_ in the bar, on that first night, and then he’d smashed that guy’s face into a pool table, so clearly it’s not an actual term of endearment. It’s not a pet name. It doesn’t mean anything.

“I’ll be by,” he says. He hadn’t planned on it. But he doesn’t care what his plans were. “Lock your door, though. I’ll pick it when I get there.”

“Look at you,” Jason says, sounding amused and maybe pleased. “Guess I’ll see you later then.”

“Sure,” Clint says, and hangs up before he says something stupid like _Looking forward to it_ or _It’ll be good to see you again._

After that, Clint always calls, and they plan to meet at Jason’s apartment, or at some bar, or in a series of 24-hour diners. Jason’s only late once, and Clint isn’t _worried_ , because it’s not his place to worry about him, but he goes looking anyway, just to pass the time.

He finds Jason in an alley, fighting three men. All three of them have knives, but Jason’s fighting with his fists, and his body armor is good enough that there isn’t much blood. But there _is_ blood, and it bothers Clint, seeing it.

Clint drops all three of them, arrows punched right into their hearts. He waits on the rooftop, catching his breath, while Jason collects the arrows and then climbs the fire escape to meet him.

“Hey,” Clint says, when Jason steps onto the roof, arrows in one hand and helmet in the other. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt your work. But the bars close in an hour, you know? Kinda want to get a beer.”

“Fuck the bars,” Jason says. He walks right up to him, pins him against the nearest gargoyle, and Clint can feel the warmth of him, through all the leather and body armor he wears. “I’ve got beer at home,” he says, mouth right against his throat.

“Shit,” Clint says, tipping his head back to give him more room. “Okay, sure. We can go wherever you want.”

So it’s not a thing, but it’s a recognizable pattern. Every time he calls, Jason lets him in. They never say goodbye, because Clint always leaves when Jason isn’t looking, sneaks out while he’s in the shower or disappears after Jason goes out on patrol. And that’s shitty, probably, just leaving like that, but Jason never calls him on it, so maybe he doesn’t mind.

It’s not a thing. It’s nothing.

It’s still the closest thing to an actual relationship that Clint’s had since he left the circus. Unless he counts Agent Coulson, who’s been dogging him for the past two years. Which Clint sure as hell does _not_ , because he’s running low on scraps of dignity but isn’t completely out yet.

Whatever they have, it doesn’t explain why Clint’s here, standing outside of Jason’s apartment at a truly unholy hour of the morning, pounding his bloody fist against the door.

“Fuck,” he says, quietly, to himself, and tries not to sway in place.

“Yeah?” Jason yells from the other side of the door, and Clint’s so damn relieved he almost falls into it.

He stops knocking and brings his hand to his side, under his jacket. “Jay?”

He hears the locks rattling back, and then the door swings open, and Jason’s standing there, in jeans and no shirt, looking pissed.

“I’m sorry,” Clint says, on reflex. He shouldn’t be here. “Jason, I’m sorry.”

Jason grabs him, hauling him inside and kicking the door shut behind him. Clint doesn’t fight him, even when Jason pushes him against the wall, shoves the blade of his forearm into Clint’s throat, and grabs his wrist, pulling it up, slamming it against the wall and then visibly double-taking.

_Oh_ , Clint thinks. _He thought I was reaching for a gun._

Clint flexes his hand. Some of the blood rolls down from his palm, catches against Jason’s grip.

“What the fuck?” Jason breathes out, staring at Clint’s empty hand, and the blood coating it.

Clint wheezes a little, breathless from being dragged around, but he holds still, doesn’t fight. Jason could kick Clint’s ass on his best day, and this is a spectacularly bad one. “Hey,” Clint says, “can we not? Don’t mind getting a little rough, but not tonight, okay?”

Jason drops his forearm away from Clint’s throat and tugs his jacket back. Clint keeps his eyes pinned on the opposite wall while Jason looks at the bloody, meaty mess of Clint’s side.

“What the _fuck_?” Jason repeats.

“Sorry,” Clint says, again. He closes his eyes, tries to catch his breath. He’s panting and feels dizzy. He’s been lightheaded for the past three blocks. “I just thought—hey, can I stay here? For a little bit? Sleep it off? Won’t get your sheets dirty. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

Jason drags the jacket off of him, throws it on the ground, and then peels his shirt up. It sticks to the smaller cuts, the ones that have started clotting over. Clint bites back a pained noise, thunks his head into the wall to center himself.

“Shit,” Jason says, softly. “Shit, Clint, what the _hell_?”

“I know.” Clint takes a breath. It comes out wet, sounds like he’s about to _cry_ , and he clears his throat. He wants to tell Jason – _I’m not gonna cry, I’m just swallowing blood_ – but it’s probably better to just pretend it never happened at all. “It’s pretty bad, right? I didn’t have time to look.”

Which is a lie, that last part. He damn sure had time to look. He looked plenty.

Jason stares at him for a second and then ducks his head, shoves Clint’s shirt up higher so he can see everything Clint’s done to himself.

He’s stupid. He’s so fucking stupid. What the hell did he expect was going to happen?

“Who did this?” Jason looks back up at him. There’s an expression on his face that Clint’s never seen before. It makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up, makes him feel like some small thing, trapped and vulnerable. “Who the fuck did this to you?”

Clint shakes his head. He may be stupid, but he’s not a damn idiot. This happened in Jason’s town. He’s going to feel some kind of responsible. And Clint doesn’t want him going after the tracksuits just because Clint’s incapable of noticing when he’s being drawn into a trap.

And anyway, the immediate problem’s taken care of. The immediate problem is just another batch of dead bodies cooling on concrete.

“No,” he says, head tipped back, closing his eyes again and hoping that’ll hide the lie. “Nah, don’t worry. I got ‘em. I took care of it.”

Jason makes a faint, disbelieving noise. “Then why the hell were you running, Clint? You took care of it, but you ran all the way here? Didn’t stop at an ER? What the fuck is this?”

“Setup,” Clint says, because at least that part’s true. “I took a job. It was a trap. Had to get kinda creative about the exit, and then this guy, this fucking agent—he’s been following me. Almost grabbed me. So I just-- I came here.”

He takes a hard breath in, keeps his eyes shut tight. “Shit. I probably fucking led him here. I’m sorry. I _know_ better. I do, but--”

“Shut up,” Jason says, harsh, loud. Clint shuts his mouth so fast his teeth click. “Shut the fuck up, Clint. Stop being _sorry_. For fuck’s sake.”

Clint blinks his eyes open, tries to get a read on the look on Jason’s face. It’s closed-off, empty in a way that Jason doesn’t usually get. Not with him.

Clint’s seen that expression a couple of times, though. When Jason’s ducking into hallways, phone to his ear. Or once, when Clint was tracking Red Hood, and he found him yelling at Batman on a rooftop.

Jason’s staring at the wound on Clint’s side. A frown settles over his face, and then deepens. He takes a sharp, surprised breath.

“Goddamn it, Clint,” Jason says, low and angry. Clint wondered how long it would take him to notice. That gash in his side, it’s no bullet wound. It’s not the clean, straight slash of a knife wound either. It’s a puncture wound, and the thing that ripped into him is still there. Stuck, protruding, sticking right out of him. “How deep does this go?”

Jason holds his hand over the metal, like he’s thinking about yanking it out. Clint tenses up, can’t help it, but he doesn’t pull away.

“Oh,” Clint says, on the exhale, trying not to think of how much it had hurt, when he’d tried to wiggle it out earlier, “pretty deep.”

“Shit.” Jason eye’s eyes flash back up to meet Clint’s. “You need a doctor.”

“No,” Clint says, shaking his head. “It’s fine. Right? It’ll be fine. Fuck doctors. Just get me alcohol and some pliers. And maybe, if you could just—if you’ll hold a flashlight---”

Jason scoffs. “The fuck is wrong with you? Clint, it’s okay. I’ll just---”

“Fine,” Clint says. “Just give me a flashlight, and I’ll hold it with my fucking _teeth_.”

“I know a guy,” Jason says, over the top of him. “I know a guy, and I’ll call him. Okay? He’ll come here, and he’ll look. And then, if he says hospital, I’m taking you.”

Clint swallows. He’s leaning pretty hard into the wall, but he’s still vertical. He hates doctors, but here, in Jason’s apartment, he thinks it wouldn’t bother him so much. At least it’s not a fucking hospital. “A doctor?”

“Yeah,” Jason says. “ER doc. Works the fights, sometimes. He’ll look.”

Clint blinks and wavers a little bit. Jason steadies him with a hand on his shoulder, and Clint almost topples himself all over again, leaning into Jason’s grip. Normally, he tries not to be so desperate, but things are starting to get a little hysterical, in his head.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, yeah.”

Jason nods. His eyes are focused on Clint’s face, eyebrows pulled together. He looks troubled and serious and _concerned_. “Okay,” he says, “c’mon. Let’s get you sitting down and then--”

There’s a knock at the door. Sudden and loud. An efficient, no-nonsense _rap-rap-rap_. It screams _cop_ so loud that the silence that follows doesn’t even matter. Clint knows exactly who’s on the other side of that door.

“Oh shit,” Clint says, screwing his eyes shut and thunking his head back against the wall. “Fuck. I brought him here. I’m sorry. I brought him right to you.”

Jason breathes out. His hand is curled around Clint’s shoulder, and he’s staring at his door, an expression on his face that Clint can’t quite puzzle out. His mouth is pressed flat, and there’s a distant kind of focus in his eyes, like he’s pulling variables apart, trying to find a solution where _x_ doesn’t equal _you’re fucked_.

“I’m sorry,” Clint says, again.

Like Jason doesn’t have enough trouble on his own. Like he isn’t the Goddamn Red Hood, an actual, no-shit _hero_. Like he needs a federal agent showing up at his door when he has half an arsenal of stolen weapons lying around and a wanted fugitive bleeding out in his living room.

“Shush,” Jason says, voice muted, attention elsewhere.

“Shit,” Clint says. His heart feels pinned against his spine, fluttering like a trapped butterfly. “I’m sorry,” he says. Just one more time. Because he _is_. And it doesn’t matter, doesn’t change anything, doesn’t do any Goddamn good. But he is. He’s so fucking sorry for this. “I’ll go. I’ll talk to him. I won’t--”

“Stop,” Jason says. His eyes snap back to Clint’s face, and there’s a beat of that hazy distraction and then suddenly he’s focused completely. His eyes spark with something that moves too fast to track and then he softens, all at once.

“Oh, fuck you,” he murmurs, rueful and amused. “I’m not giving you to anybody.”

Clint opens his mouth, but there’s nothing in his head. Just a desperate ache in his chest and a fear so sharp that it feels like it’s going to cut itself out of him.

He doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want to go to prison. He doesn’t want to hurt Jason. He can’t, for the life of him, rank those in any meaningful order.

“Come here,” Jason says, and then he kisses him. For no reason that Clint can parse. Leans in and presses his lips against Clint’s, sweet and gentle, in a way he’s never kissed him before.

And then Jason picks him up, hands hooked behind Clint’s thighs, and he’s careful, slow and deliberate in his movements, so it doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it could. But it still hurts so damn much that things smear together in Clint’s head, and he isn’t fully present again until Jason’s laying him down in the bathtub.

There’s another knock at the door. Louder this time. The door rattles against the frame.

Jason’s putting a gun in his hand.

And, God, Clint hates guns. But he left everything behind. His bow, his bag, his wallet. The key to Jason’s place. Everything, all of it. Every damn thing he owns that he isn’t wearing right now.

“Here,” Jason says, carefully folding Clint’s hand around the gun. “You can use this, right?”

“Point and pull,” Clint says. “Easy.”

“You fucking snob,” Jason says. There’s a smile on his face, but Clint can’t find it in his eyes.

“Jay,” Clint says, “get me up. I gotta deal with this.”

“Sweetheart,” Jason says, hand curling around Clint’s cheek, “you’ve lost too much blood to get it up.”

Clint closes his eyes. “I’ll deal with him. I can.”

Jason hums and checks Clint’s grip on the gun. “If they get past me, just shoot the fuck out of them. If you run out of bullets, there’s another gun under the sink.”

Clint shakes his head. His eyes are still closed. He should fix that. “Let’s go out the window,” he mumbles. “Let’s just run.”

There’s a blur of warmth on his forehead. He feels Jason pushing his hair out of his face. “Oh, sure,” Jason says. “I’d like to see you sprint five fucking feet right now.”

Clint breathes. He feels dizzy. He feels _drunk_. The spinny, sick kind of drunk. “Then _you_ go. Leave me the guns. Get the hell out. Go out the window, Jay, c’mon. Please.”

Jason laughs. There’s something skeptical in it, but he still sounds inexplicably fond. “Stop pulling this bullshit martyr act, you asshole. You’re much hotter without it.”

Clint reaches for him, blind and clumsy but fast, too fast for Jason to dodge. He gets his bloody hand around Jason’s wrist and pulls him down, pulls him close, until he’s kneeling on the bathroom floor. And then Clint wraps his hand around the back of Jason’s neck and makes himself sit up, gritting his teeth against the lightning strike of nauseating pain that follows.

“Don’t get hurt,” he says. He doesn’t recognize his own voice. Low and gravely, forced through clenched teeth. “Don’t get hurt because I’m an idiot.”

That knock comes again. _Rap-rap-rap_. The door whacks against the frame. A voice calls out, and Clint knows that voice, knows the man waiting for Jason behind it. The agent. Phil Coulson.

“I’m not gonna get hurt,” Jason tells him. It sounds like a promise. And when he kisses Clint again, it tastes like one, too. Heavy and intense, coppery with blood. “I’ll be right back. Don’t bleed out Put some pressure on that, for fuck’s sake. This isn’t amateur hour.”

Jason pulls back with enough force that Clint has to let him go, and then he’s out of the bathroom and headed for the door, and Clint’s weak and alone, shivery and cold and getting colder.

The gun is heavy in his hand. His eyes won’t stay open.

_No_ , he thinks. He tries to lever himself up. He hooks his elbow against the tub and pulls, but the muscles in his side seize and fail, and he falls back down, whacks his head against the edge. He wavers on the edge of consciousness, but he can’t hold it.

He goes limp and useless, doesn’t put pressure on a Goddamn thing.


	2. Chapter 2

The world’s best bargain hitman is bleeding out in Jason’s bathtub, and someone’s knocking on his door like they’re here to serve papers. Jason’s had better days. But he’s had worse days, too. And he’s prepared for this one to dip even further into the red if necessary.

He grabs the SIG off the bedside table, forgoing the friendlier, quieter guns because he’s already winding himself into some kind of mood.

He has Clint’s blood on his hands. And he keeps thinking about the way Clint had flinched when Jason grabbed him, the way he tipped his chin down but kept his hands open, didn’t fight back.

Jason hadn’t been egregiously rough with him. He’d suspected at the time that Clint might be there to kill him, but Bruce opened his throat with a Batarang once, and Jason still goes to Wayne Manor every Christmas. A little attempted murder can be overlooked, for professional reasons. He hadn’t taken it _personally_.

He’s taking things a bit more personally now.

He’s moving toward the door, prepared to explain how personally he’s taking things, when the door jostles and shifts and then springs open.

“Oh,” says the man standing on Jason’s welcome mat. “Hello.”

He has a gun aimed at Jason’s chest. Jason has his aimed at the man’s face.

There’s a long moment where they each wait for the other to speak, and then Jason remembers he has a world class assassin exsanguinating in his bathtub. He doesn’t have time for bullshit tests of will. And, anyway, he’s not Bruce Wayne. There’s no part of his personality that’s content to let silence speak for him.

“Sorry,” Jason says, “we’re full up on life insurance, pal. Maybe try the next unit over. Older lady, chain-smoker. I can’t promise she has any money, but I can fucking guarantee she’s bad at handling whatever she’s got.”

The man studies him, coolly, methodically. His eyes move over Jason’s face, drop down to his bare chest, take in the worn-in state of his jeans, flick briefly to the gun, and then settle back on Jason’s eyes. “I’m here for Clint Barton,” he says. “That’s not you.”

“Sure as hell isn’t,” Jason agrees. “Again, try a couple units over.”

“Oh, I know he’s here.” The man points at the floor in front of Jason’s door. “There’s a blood trail. Stops right here.”

“That was me,” Jason says. “I had an accident at Jazzercise earlier. Rhonda gets real loose with her elbows toward the end of class.”

His eyebrows twitch up, and he smiles, and it’s creepier than it should be, because it looks, somehow, entirely _pleasant_. Like he’s not even mad about this situation. Like being held at gunpoint isn’t something he finds novel enough to be upsetting.

“Are you his Gotham contact?” The man is regarding Jason with renewed interest, and Jason’s not sure he appreciates that. “He doesn’t usually return to major cities more than once a year. He’s been here six times in the past four months. We thought you might be helping him find targets.”

_Are you his Gotham contact?_ Jason thinks. And, fuck. He supposes that he is.

“Buddy,” Jason says, “listen. You and I are about to have some contact if you don’t fuck off. Come back during regular business hours, okay? We can talk encyclopedias or Girl Scout cookies or whatever the fuck it is you’re selling then.”

He gets another smile, but it’s noticeably less pleasant. “He’s lost a lot of blood,” the man says. “And he needs a tetanus shot.”

Jason rolls his eyes. “That’s a weird way to pronounce tequila. But you _are_ the whitest fucking person I’ve ever seen.”

This time, there’s no smile. “He fell fourteen feet into a dumpster on a work site. He hasn’t had a tetanus shot in his life. He needs immediate medical care. I don’t have time for this. _He_ doesn’t have time for this.”

“Well, I hope you’ve got an ambulance on hand,” Jason says. “Because if you take one more fucking step into this apartment, you’re gonna need it.”

They are having, Jason realizes, a _standoff_. Ludicrously, unbelievably, he is deadlocked in his own apartment with a fed in formal wear.

“Agent Coulson,” Clint says. He’s standing in the bathroom doorway, with no gun in his hand, no weapon at all. He’s leaning hard into the doorframe, and he gives Jason a brief, apologetic look before he directions his attention toward the man in the suit.

His hand is smearing blood on the wooden frame of the door. There’s a bead of it, rolling down his arm from wrist to elbow.

“You know him?” Jason asks.

“He’s been following me.” Clint’s got his other hand pressed to his side, but he’s starting to shake. Jason can see it from here, the fine tremors in his hands. They’ll only get worse the longer this goes on.

He’s pale. Unnaturally so. Verging on Class III hemorrhage pale. Damn near unconscious pale. There’s a fuzziness to his eyes that Jason really doesn’t like. Clint’s always staring out at the world like he thinks it’s going to steal his wallet and break his knees if he doesn’t keep an eye on it. Jason hasn’t seen Clint look that woolly and unfocused since the last time he woke up in Jason’s bed after an especially acrobatic evening.

“Okay,” Jason says, jaw clenching tight. He’s careful about his kills in Gotham city limits. He damn sure hasn’t dropped any kind of federal agent in town for years now. But he’s made amends with Bruce for worse crimes.

He turns back toward Agent Coulson, who’s kept his gun – and his focus – centered on Jason. “Listen up. I gotta get this strange man who just manifested in my bathroom to the ER. Now, I can make that trip with just him, or I can bring you along in the trunk, with a few new bullet holes. Which option calls to you?”

“Don’t threaten him,” Clint says. “He’s a SHIELD agent.”

“Oh no,” Jason says, mock-frightened, “I’ve never been in _legal trouble_ before.”

“Mr. Barton,” the fed says, without ever taking his eyes off Jason. “You’re not looking well. Let’s get you to a hospital.”

“A prison hospital?” Jason asks. “Or were you just gonna take him straight to your creepy SHIELD basement?”

“Jay,” Clint says, softly, and Jason glances at him, takes in the unnatural pallor of his skin, the way he’s holding himself up with a death grip around the doorframe. Clint wavers and swallows. He looks more resigned than scared, but the fear’s there, underneath. “I’m not—I gotta go in. I feel pretty bad.”

Jason hesitates for a second and then looks back to the agent. Jason’s seen all kinds of evil, and that’s not what he sees in him. But he sees a practicality that he doesn’t like, a professionalism that he doesn’t trust with Clint, who’s so damn sweet, who can’t hold his own loneliness, who mistakes decency for kindness and affection.

Jason can see it already, knows exactly how this is going to play out.

Jason’s never promised Clint anything, because he knows Clint wouldn’t believe it if he did. Over time, as the Pit loosened its death grip around his throat, Jason’s learned to forgive Bruce, but he never, ever wants to repeat his mistakes. Whatever Clint thinks about what Jason has or hasn’t promised him, there’s not a chance in hell Jason’s going to let someone get him killed.

The agent’s eyes finally flicker Clint’s direction, and that’s it. That’s Jason’s moment. That’s the second he should’ve taken the shot.

He’s hyperaware of the weight of the gun in his hands, the tension in his trigger finger.

But there are any number of ways to solve a problem. And, despite the Bats’ vocal opinions to the contrary, Jason doesn’t default to extreme violence when a collection of minor felonies will work just as well.

“Alright, Agent Coulson,” he says, as he lowers the gun, and trots out his most charming smile. “Maybe you should call an ambulance.”

\- -

There’s a bit of a fuss once the paramedics show up, which is pretty standard for their profession.

Jason likes paramedics the most out of all the various flavors of emergency personnel, but he knows before they get there that they aren’t going to let him ride along in the ambulance. Agent Coulson steals that honor easily. There are many perks to being a blandly handsome, be-suited federal agent, and Jason, who’s done his fair share of impersonating one, knows all of them, but that natural social trust ranks among the most convenient.

Jason makes his exit while the paramedics are crowded over Clint in his living room, sparing a second to grab a few essentials while Coulson’s distracted.

Clint looks for him, when he leaves. Doesn’t say anything. His eyes track Jason in glimpses, darting between Jason and the agent, careful not to look Jason’s way when Coulson’s watching. Jason moves fast, doesn’t linger.

There’s something that aches in the way Clint lets him go. No shock on his face, no betrayal. Just a resignation that feels old, fits like something Clint’s worn in.

From what Jason gathered, the people who taught Clint to accept things like that are mostly already dead. But he lives in hope that, someday, he’s going to find the ones that aren’t.

He knows you can’t retroactively fix things like that. Hurting the people who hurt Clint isn’t suddenly going to take the damage away. But what Bruce has never understood about justice is that, sometimes, it doesn’t fix a Goddamn thing. Sometimes _fixing_ isn’t the point. Justice and mercy might be in the same family, but they sure as hell aren’t twins.

\- -

Jason doesn’t break into the hospital. He’s of the opinion that hospitals are more or less public buildings, which mean he can’t break into a hospital the same way he can’t break into a public library. Sure, maybe he entered by nontraditional avenues, but he’s welcome in the space, so he didn’t _break in_.

His nontraditional entrance allows him to spend some quality time with the hospital’s EHR system, reviewing information relevant to a certain newly-admitted patient. It also affords him unsupervised access to fresh coffee, which he happily carries with him all the way to the waiting area nearest to Clint’s hospital room.

When he drops into the chair across from Agent Coulson, he isn’t even granted the base courtesy of a look of surprise. Instead, he’s greeted with a flash of understated irritation and then what is almost certainly jealousy. “If you were going to pick up coffee,” he says, “you could’ve brought some for me.”

“I sure could’ve,” Jason confirms. He kicks his feet up onto the arm of the chair and takes a long, showy sip. “But I don’t bring coffee for cops. I try not to support stereotypes.”

“I’m not a cop,” Coulson says, although he doesn’t seem insulted by the accusation.

Well, there’s no accounting for taste. And, anyway, Grayson seems perfectly happy with his occupation, although Jason privately believes that’s due to an acute and long-unexamined fetish for utility belts.

“Marshal,” Jason says, with a shrug. “Constable. Sheriff.”

“I’m an agent of SHIELD,” Coulson tells him, with admirable composure.

“I’m a preschool teacher,” Jason says.

Agent Coulson blinks, long and slow. “I can tell,” he says, after a beat of loudly skeptical silence. “You have a gentle temperament about you.”

“Thanks,” Jason says. “I consider myself a nurturer.”

“Lovely,” Coulson says. “And do you often greet people with SIGs during class?”

“Hell yes, I do,” Jason says. “In this political climate? Any strange white man comes into my pre-k class unannounced, and I’m gonna headshot him first and make my apologies later. I don’t have time for a mass shooting. Joey still hasn’t learned his Goddamn colors, and we’re six weeks behind on playdough crafts.”

Coulson’s jaw tightens for a moment. It’s not a smile, but it could’ve been a swallowed laugh. “It sounds like your students are lucky to have you.”

“Damn right they are,” Jason says. He gestures over his shoulder, toward Clint’s room. “Speaking of lucky to have me, how’s my surprise houseguest doing?”

The smile he gets is mild and polite. “I’m not going to discuss his medical information with you.”

“Buzzkill,” Jason accuses.

Coulson shrugs. He appears unmoved, and unmovable. Jason sighs, theatrically, and pulls out his phone.

“Guess I’ll check my dating apps,” he says. “See if anyone in this hospital needs a turndown service.”

Coulson treats him to an unimpressed stare that doesn’t break, not even a little, when Jason winks at him. So Jason does it again, outrageously, playing it up, runs his tongue over his upper lip, just to see how far he can push this before the agent breaks.

Coulson just blinks at him, looking bored and obnoxiously unaffected.

_SOS_ , Jason sends, to Babs. _I need a character witness_.

His phone chimes, almost immediately, with a text from Steph: _I witness that you’re an asshole_.

_Seconded_ , from Grayson. Then: _Need me to come arrest you for it?_

_You’ll lose that jurisdiction battle_ , Jason says, even though he’s tempted to throw Nightwing at Agent Coulson, see if he weathers Grayson’s ruthless flirting half as well as he weathers Jason’s general assholery.

_Why are you at a hospital?_ Drake asks, because of course he’s already run the coordinates. Of course he has.

_En route_ , Bruce says, and the chatter dies.

“Must be pretty popular,” Coulson observes, after the flurry of chimes has quietened.

“Oh, sure,” Jason says, tucking his phone back into the pocket of his jeans. “You gotta hit them with the shirtless profile pic right off the bat. Gets ‘em every time.”

“Yeah,” Coulson says. “I can see how that would work out well for you.”

Jason chokes a little, genuinely startled, and shoots Coulson a suspicious look. The agent looks back at him, bland as oatmeal, and then, after a pause, he winks.

For a second, Jason genuinely can’t decide if he’s incredulous or charmed. After a reflective pause, he comes to the begrudging conclusion that it might be both. And that, unfortunately, indicates that things have progressed to a level of complicated that he legitimately cannot juggle right now.

He’s not above flirting with people who are in vaguely adversarial roles. If he was, he’d never get a date in this town. But it’s a lot to manage when he’s here to jailbreak his hitman-with-benefits while simultaneously running a shell game using Batman as the distraction.

“Well,” Jason says, climbing to his feet and stretching a bit. “Time to seduce a nurse for medical records.” He taps the series of commands into his phone that will brick it in five minutes, locks it for the hell of it, and leaves it by his coffee. “Don’t steal my coffee.”

“I would never,” Coulson says. He’s watching Jason like he knows he’s up to something but hasn’t decided how alarmed he should be yet.

Jason grins at him, more feral than he should probably show, and sets off to find a friendly escape route. He needs to move his car.

\- -

Sneaking Clint out of the hospital is easier than it should be. Jason has a fair amount of practice, sure, but it’s been almost exclusively limited to sneaking _himself_ out. He smuggled Drake once and Roy twice, but all of his other hospital escapes have been one-man operations. 

Bruce is a hell of a distraction, though, especially when he lurks into a hospital in full Batman gear and finds a SHIELD agent trying to hack his way into Jason’s abandoned cellphone. Jason doesn’t keep identifying information in his phone; there’s nothing that would link him back to Bruce Wayne, but Bruce doesn’t know that.

Batman and Agent Chuckles square off over the cellphone, and Jason slips into Clint’s hospital room while they’re both distracted.

Clint is unconscious and pale in his hospital bed. They’d sedated him pretty thoroughly earlier, probably to make it easier to transport him once the SHIELD reinforcements arrived with their cavalcade of armored black SUVs. Or maybe he was being a nuisance in the ER. It was hard to get a read for that from the chart.

His stay at the hospital earned him a unit of blood, a bevy of stitches, a hospital gown, and a pair of really tacky wrist restraints. Jason liberates Clint from the insulting fabric restraints and checks the bandages on his side. He’s gauzed up all over his torso, although the wound where the piece of bent metal had been buried in his side is the only injury serious enough to warrant stitches. 

Jason figures Clint could probably do with another unit or so of blood, but there’s no reason they can’t pick that up later. And, anyway, taking blood from a Gotham hospital is always a bit of a crapshoot. In this town, it’s a risk to trust the _water_ supply.

“Gonna wake up for me?” Jason asks, tugging that hospital gown down to a position of passable modesty. “Barton, you alive?”

“Hm,” Clint hums. Fidgets, twitches. His fingers curl up, and his eyelashes flutter against his cheeks. But he can’t seem to swim his way to the surface, no matter how admirable his effort.

“Yeah, okay,” Jason says, because he’s in the process of stealing a man in a hospital gown right out of a hospital occupied by both an agent of SHIELD and the actual Goddamn Batman. And that’s the kind of lunatic bullshit that doesn’t happen to people smart enough not to fall into the _tights and Kevlar_ lifestyle, but it doesn’t even rank in the top five of Jason’s most ill-advised capers.

“C’mon, Clint, let’s get out of here,” Jason says, pulling the equipment out of his bag. “Fuck’s sake, I bet you don’t even have insurance.”

\- -

Some pedestrian on the sidewalk snaps a picture with her phone of the descent. Jason would yell at her for it, but any woman roaming the streets of Gotham alone at four in the morning in jogging attire is absolutely carrying, and getting shot while repelling down from a fifth story hospital room with a passenger strapped to him seems likely to ruin his whole morning.

He flips her off, more out of obligation than actual irritation, and that’s the picture that makes the rounds online: Jason with a nondescript black mask on, navigating his way down to street level with Clint unconscious and strapped to his back.

For six hours after the picture is posted, there’s some back-and-forth while people try to work out whether this is a comment on the state of health care prices in the U.S. or just general Gotham bullshit. And then the picture’s gone, scrubbed abruptly and completely out of existence.

Jason can’t call either way whether he should thank Babs or SHIELD for that.


	3. Chapter 3

Clint wakes up slow, thoughts dizzy and cottony, head pounding at his temples and in the very center of his forehead. His side aches, and his mouth is dry, and he’s lying on a bed that’s too soft for anything he can afford.

Too comfortable for a hotel room. Too quiet for a hospital. Too dark for a jail cell.

Something’s wrong. He’s somewhere he isn’t supposed to be, somewhere he didn’t put himself. His brain wants to flinch awake, but his body is heavy and useless. _Drugged_ , he thinks. But it’s wearing off now.

He breathes in, curls his fingers toward his palms, tenses his shoulders and his abs, gets his feet pressed flat against the sheets.

“Stand down,” Jason says. He sounds amused. That hint of dry laughter in his voice is enough to make Clint’s heart slow to something steady. “It’s a safe house. You’re fine.”

Clint forces his eyes open. The room is shadowy and mostly empty, minimally decorated to the point that the only thing on the walls is a series of artfully arranged melee weapons. Jason’s sprawled on the armchair next to the bed, scrolling through his phone and looking smug about something.

There’s an IV pole standing guard on the other side of the bed. Clint squints at the bag hanging suspended over his head, but it could be any damn thing. He wouldn’t know.

“Saline drip,” Jason tells him. When Clint glances back his way, Jason’s staring pensively at the IV. After a moment, he shrugs. “Gave you another unit of blood, too.”

“Blood,” Clint repeats. He swallows. There’s a sharp, sickening flash of stale fear, a memory of holding his hand over his side, fingers tacky with blood, swaying outside Jason’s door and realizing that he’d lost the key to Jason’s apartment.

“Yeah,” Jason says. “You and Robin have the same blood type. I keep a couple pints on hand.”

There’s some piece of that Clint doesn’t like. It feels jigsaw-complicated, and thorny. He closes his eyes, but, even in the full dark of his own thoughts, he can’t for the life of him figure out what bothers him.

“Get some sleep,” Jason suggests. “No one’s gonna look for you here.”

\- -

The next time Clint wakes up, he’s alone. The room is still and silent, and the faint glow behind the blackout curtains has changed. The IV pole is gone, and there’s a bottle of water on the bedside table. Clint hauls himself up and out of bed, breathing through the stinging spike of pain from his side.

He should look at the cut. He should leave out the window. He should call Barney and say he knows they aren’t talking, knows he fucked everything up, knows Barney doesn’t owe him a damn thing, but he’s in way out of his depth, and isn’t that what big brothers are for? To drag you back to shallow waters when you’re on the verge of drowning?

But there’s no reason to do any of that. If the stitches won’t hold, Clint’s too fuzzy-minded to fix them. If the window leads to escape, he’s too weak to pursue it. And if he knew a number Barney still answered, he wouldn’t have a phone to call it with.

He’s wearing a hospital gown, but there’s a change of clothes on the armchair, so he maneuvers his way into them. They don’t smell like anything, and they fit too well to be Jason’s. They’re new, he thinks, although someone cut off all the tags.

He feels dizzy for a second after he tugs his way into the t-shirt, so he opens the bottle of water and takes slow, careful sips until everything settles.

When the bottle is mostly empty, he makes his way out of the bedroom and into the kind of brutally minimalist, ludicrously expensive high-rise condo he’s only ever visited when he needed to kill someone rich. There are too many windows and too many stainless steel appliances and a whole set of bar stools that look like they haven’t been touched since the movers brought them in.

“What the fuck,” Clint says, because it feels warranted.

Jason said this was a safe house, so Clint had assumed it was something of Jason’s. But he explores the whole floorplan, checks the bathroom, and the other bedroom, and the laundry room, and all six of the closets. The only thing that reminds him of Jason is the melee weapon display in the master bedroom and the six separate guns he finds hidden around the place.

He doesn’t know who lives here. He doesn’t know where he is. He makes his way back to the main room, where at least he can track multiple exit points at once. 

He hunches his shoulders in, winds his arm around his side, curling his hand around the bandages just in case he starts bleeding again. He feels clumsy and stupid and out of place.

He shuffles to the wall of windows overlooking the city skyline. He’s in his bare feet, stepping gingerly. The cold of the hardwood floor underscores how unwelcome he is, like the whole Goddamn condo wants to pitch him out through the trash chute. He stares out at the city and tries to piece together where he is. When his breath fogs up the glass, he has to bite back an instinctive apology.

“I gotta get the hell out of here,” Clint says. The echoing silence of the open floor plan seems to agree.

But before he can make a strategy for that, before he can decide if he’s going to steal one of those fancy knives from the knife block as a contingency plan or just take to the streets of Gotham empty-handed, there’s the understated _click_ of new locks rolling back, and then Jason’s stepping inside.

Clint almost doesn’t recognize him for a second. He’s never seen him dressed like this.

He looks some weird blend of cheap and expensive, like he has the money and the temperament to make really high-quality mistakes. He’s wearing a suit, well-tailored and dark, and his shirt is open at the neck, showing off a gold necklace that Clint assumes he stole from someone with more money than taste. His hair is slicked back, and Clint can spot the faint but unusually obvious lump of guns in shoulder-holsters under his jacket. 

He’s carrying a duffle bag, all camel-colored leather and brass, and Clint’s no expert, but he thinks that thing probably cost more than most families pay in monthly rent.

“What the hell?” Clint says, when he can say anything at all. “Am I hallucinating? Am I dead?”

Jason grimaces and then kicks the door shut behind him. “Yeah,” he says, “I know. It’s terrible. My cover for this place works with the Russian mafia.”

Jason drops the duffle bag on the kitchen island and then immediately starts working his way out of his suit. The jacket gets tossed across the room like it’s contagious, and Jason babies the guns in the shoulder holsters but damn near loses buttons in his haste to ditch the shirt underneath.

It looks soft. Kinda shiny. Clint’s trying to work out if it’s silk or not. Well, what the hell would he know about something like that?

“People think you’re Russian?” Clint asks, slowly winding his way closer.

Jason’s hands go still, and he looks up at him. For a beat, he just smirks, and then he launches into what sounds like impressively fluent Russian. Clint doesn’t know near enough of the language to track what he’s saying, but, given that it’s Jason saying it, it’s probably either a come-on or a threat.

“Okay,” Clint says. “So you know Russian.”

Jason tips his head to the side. The edges between him and the rich, obnoxious nightmare who walked in wearing his face have blurred over the past few minutes, but they go suddenly sharp again. Jason says something else in Russian. Demanding now, almost certainly a threat. His tone drops and sharpens up some, and his eyes flip empty, and, sure, alright, Clint can see how people might fall for it.

But, still. That’s a dangerous game to play. “Isn’t that going to piss off the real Russian mafia?”

They’re reasonably active in Gotham. Clint knows they are. He’s killed a couple of them.

Jason shrugs. He’s ditching his cufflinks now, and there’s an ease to the motion that makes Clint feel cheap all over again. Clint’s never worn cufflinks. Not once in his life. He’s kind of fascinated by the dexterity in Jason’s hands as he sheds this skin he’s adopted, but that could just be the remnants of the drugs talking.

He should definitely stop staring.

“I sell them some guns sometimes,” Jason says. “Ship some of their drugs. Makes it easy to keep an eye on them. And the family I’m supposed to be working for is a League front. Talia’s not going to break six fucking years of radio silence to come over here and tell me to stop using her cover.”

The _League_ is probably the _League of Assassins_. Jason references them sometimes, oblique like he either doesn’t want to talk about them or assumes Clint knows everything he needs to. Clint’s never quite managed to work out how Jason knows them, or what his relationship to them is. He knows the name _Talia_ is always said like it’s broken glass in Jason’s mouth.

But he doesn’t know why Jason would feel entitled to treat them so casually. The League doesn’t tolerate lapsed recruits. They sure as hell hadn’t implied to Clint that there’d be much hope of a new career path after joining up, which is why Clint had exited Europe with so much haste when they’d wandered by to introduce themselves.

Granted, Jason has more powerful allies. Jason has more powerful everything.

Clint’s not a jewel thief, but he thinks those cufflinks could cover a decent chunk of those medical bills he just walked out on.

If he _did_ walk out. He’s having trouble with that. With the memory of how he got out of the hospital.

“How’d I get here?” Clint asks. He braces his hands on the marble of the kitchen island. It’s cold, and steadying. He eyes the barstools warily.

Jason snorts. “I told you,” he says. “Russian mafia. Nobody in this building is gonna call the cops. I could be carrying unconscious blondes up here every weekend, and nobody would say a Goddamn thing.”

Clint thinks Jason should get better neighbors. But he also thinks the _carrying unconscious blondes_ part of that explanation is the more relevant subject to pursue. “You carried me?”

Jason blinks and then furrows his eyebrows. “You don’t remember any of it, huh?”

Clint shrugs. He remembers the ambulance. He remembers the emergency room. He remembers Coulson pulling rank, and he remembers the sharp pinch of a needle. Everything after that is a blank of nothing, right up until he woke up here.

“Okay,” Jason says. “Yeah. I carried you up here. There aren’t any cameras in the service elevators. I don’t think anyone saw anything.”

But that doesn’t explain how Clint got here. At best, it explains how Clint got from the building’s parking garage to Jason’s condo. “But how did I get out of the hospital?”

Jason honest-to-God fidgets for a moment. He runs a hand through his hair and then, with a soft, disgruntled noise, he tips his head forward and finger-combs his hair until all that slicked-back neatness disappears into a jumble of tousled curls. When he tosses his head back, the whole dark mess of it settles, and he shouldn’t be so handsome all the Goddamn time. It isn’t fair.

Clint’s trying to piece his life together. He has an unknown amount of stitches in his side, a federal agent and would-be assassins on his tail, and a blackout period he can’t account for. He doesn’t need Jason Todd, stripped to slacks and an undershirt, bending and snapping while Clint’s scrambling to orient himself toward what kind of disaster he’s in.

“Jason,” Clint says, when Jason keeps fussing with his hair. “How’d I get out of the hospital?”

Jason frowns at him for a second and then sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and chews at it, which is a tell that generally only surfaces when he thinks he’s on the verge of oversharing. Like that time he’d sleepily slurred _Missed you_ into Clint’s throat when Clint climbed in bed after a job, or the day Clint said _Blue’s your favorite color, huh?_ and Jason looked at him like Clint had just dropkicked a puppy.

“Well, I wasn’t gonna fucking leave you there,” Jason says, defensive. He sounds irritated, but Clint’s not sure he buys it. “You came to me for help. I wasn’t going to--- fuck’s sake, Clint. What did you expect?”

Not that. Not anything like that.

“I didn’t expect anything,” Clint says.

Jason’s frown is less thoughtful now, more genuinely annoyed. “Then why the hell did you come to my apartment? You show up, stabbed to shit, bleeding out, asking for my help. And you—what? Thought I wouldn’t give it?”

Clint shakes his head. His hand presses too hard against the bandage at his side, and he chews through the pain of it, lets the ache ground his head a bit. “I don’t,” he says. “I don’t know why I went there. I don’t remember.”

He remembers the ambush. He remembers the fight. He remembers running from rooftop to rooftop and then being driven into a construction site. He remembers falling. He remembers the dumpster and the impact and the feeling like he had fallen right into the jaws of something hungry.

He remembers the ripping feeling in his side, the pinch and the pressure and the sick-wrong feeling of being sliced open.

He remembers killing the men who were trying to kill him, and he remembers standing under a streetlight, fingers brushing the metal sticking out through his skin. He remembers the blood dripping in an arc around his feet as he twisted and turned and tried to see if it went straight through him.

He doesn’t remember deciding to go to Jason. And God, he was blocks and blocks away. It’s a wonder he didn’t bleed out walking.

“I just,” Clint says, confused and lightheaded, disoriented by how close he came to dying _again_ , due to his own stupid bullshit, his own ongoing and incredible inability to look after himself. “I wanted to see you, I think. I don’t know. I don’t know why I went there. I’m sorry. I got you into all this shit, and I didn’t mean—I didn’t want--”

“Hey.” Jason’s voice is softer now. He moves quickly, sidles around the kitchen island and then wraps his arm around Clint’s good side, pulls him in. “Stop it, Clint. Don’t fuck yourself up over this. It’s fine.”

“These people want to _kill_ me,” Clint says. Which isn’t so much of a wonder, really. Lots of people want to kill him. But they don’t usually find him. They don’t usually get this close. “And now Coulson knows about you.”

Jason laughs, quiet and a little rueful. He ducks his head in, rests his forehead against Clint’s. “I sent Batman to distract Coulson while we made our getaway.”

Clint blinks. All the swirling panic in his head goes still. He stares at Jason’s face, at the bright blue of his eyes, the crooked tilt of his smile. “You fucking _what_ ,” he says.

“Look,” Jason says. He twists away, puts a few feet of distance between them. “I’ve been doing this a long time, Clint. Coulson’s not the first spook to come haunting. And if those people who came after you are still around? It’d make my whole damn week to take care of them for you.”

Clint stares after him. He lets the words settle around him for a second and then levers himself up and onto the closest bar stool. It’s not comfortable. He figures it probably wasn’t designed with comfort as a priority.

“Jason,” he says.

“It’s my job,” Jason tells him. “Getting bad people out of Gotham. Into Arkham, Blackgate. A dumpsite Batman doesn’t know about yet. This is what I _do_ , Clint. It’s not like it’s out of my way to do it for you.”

“I _am_ a bad person,” Clint says. He points at himself, thumps his sternum hard with his pointer finger. “ _Me_ , Jason. I kill people. For money. That’s what I---”

“Shitty people,” Jason says, serious and irritated, shoulders squaring up for a fight. “You kill shitty people, Clint. That’s what I do, sometimes, too. I just don’t get paid for it.”

“You save people,” Clint says. He’s read everything he can find about the Red Hood. He’s read the personal statements, the news articles, the tweets. He knows what Jason does. It’s nothing like what Clint does. “I’ve never saved anybody from anything in my whole fucking life.”

“Bullshit.”

It’s a sharp denial. Flat and certain. He sounds so convinced that Clint’s thrown by it, the way he’d be thrown by someone pointing at the sun and saying _That’s a nuclear platypus._

“You gotta,” Jason says, and then taps his fingers on the kitchen island, drags them across like he’s underlining a point. “Draw the timeline out further, Clint. Those people you’ve killed. Think about what would’ve happened if you hadn’t. The people they would’ve hurt.”

Clint sighs. It’s a nice sentiment, and one he tells to himself on the bad days. But it’s never been true. “It’s not the same thing,” Clint says.

Jason’s quiet for a moment. His face is set and intense, flash-frozen on an expression that doesn’t give anything away. Finally, he sighs, and the tension breaks. He reaches across the marble countertop to hook the duffle bag closer.

“As someone who really could’ve benefited from a more proactive approach to crime fighting,” Jason says, “let me go ahead and offer you the gratitude of dozens of people who don’t even know what you saved them from.”

“I didn’t save any---”

“Here,” Jason says. He shoves the opened bag toward Clint.

Clint eyes his warily for a second and then drags the bag over. Inside, he finds a bow and a whole set of arrows that don’t belong to him. He takes them out, one by one, and arranges them on the island in front of him.

“Holy shit,” he says. “Where the hell did you get these?”

They’re beautiful. He doesn’t know where they came from. He’s not even sure what all of them _do_.

“They were originally the Green Arrow’s. I stole them from the Batcave,” Jason says. He smirks at the startled noise of alarm that Clint can’t quite keep to himself. “I figure, if I’m already gonna get yelled at, I might as well get free shit out of it.”

“You stole someone from federal custody and then broke into the _Batcave_?” Clint’s starting to lose track of everything he owes Jason. Honestly, at this point, his life is the cheapest thing on the list.

Jason laughs. The look he gives Clint is sidelong and about as sunny-sweet as Jason ever gets. “Well,” he says, “I’m just trying to impress you.”

Clint’s fingers lock around the arrow he’s holding. He can’t think of anything to say to that. He can’t think of a single reason why Jason would think he needed to impress him, or why the hell he’d have it in his head that Clint wasn’t already absolutely and irrevocably enthralled.

“C’mon,” Jason says, knocking his elbow gently against Clint’s side. “You’re on buddy showers until you can stand up for ten minutes without going all shaky, and I have to get out of these fucking clothes.”

And, well. That’s not an offer Clint’s going to pass up no matter how many dumpsters he falls into.

“Buddy showers,” he repeats, as he climbs gingerly to his feet. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

“Call it whatever you want,” Jason says, as he saunters back toward the master bedroom. “Just take your clothes off first.”


	4. Chapter 4

Clint starts to droop halfway through the shower, and Jason figures he needs the rest, so he doesn’t even laugh at him when he spends three full minutes with his forehead against the tile, eyes closed, maneuvering the bar of soap in semi-aimless trails across his body.

“Don’t drown, you asshole,” Jason says, and then works shampoo into Clint’s hair before carefully tipping his head back, the blade of his hand pressed right below Clint’s hairline, keeping the water out of his eyes.

“I’m fucking,” Clint says, slurring it, damn near limp in Jason’s arms. “I’m fucking vigilant right now. I’m awake.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jason says. He’s struck by the urge to kiss Clint, so he does. Presses his mouth to the delicate skin right over the nearest carotid artery and then works a line of kisses up to Clint’s jawline.

“Hey,” Clint says, blinking his eyes open. “Shit. Are we gonna—I can wake up. I _will_ wake up.”

Jason rolls his eyes. He steals the bar of soap out of Clint’s hands and bullies him back under the water for a final rinse-off. “Don’t hurt yourself,” he advises.

Clint’s eyes are closed, so it’s hard to read him, but his short laugh has some undertones Jason doesn’t find especially encouraging. “Can’t seem to stop.”

And Jason knows what that’s like. He’s not naturally self-destructive, but sometimes he’s just the safest, closest, easiest target. Sometimes the need to destroy overwhelms the instinct to protect. Sometimes he gets sucked into a whirlpool of anger and it ends with him taking a crowbar to the face two dozen times before taking a shrapnel bomb to center mass.

Sometimes Bruce Wayne finds a new Robin and doesn’t kill the madman who murdered the last one, and Jason loses his fucking mind, and then, suddenly, there’s a dozen heads in a duffle bag, and Jason gets his throat cut open with a Batarang.

Clint doesn’t seem quite the same. He doesn’t have the rage Jason has. His self-destruction is more concentrated, doesn’t share the same bleeding edges. There’s not nearly as much collateral damage. When Clint loses his grip, it seems like he’s the only one who takes the fall.

Well, him and a couple dozen of the world’s shittiest criminals.

“C’mon, killer,” Jason says. “Nap time. And then, in a couple hours, you gotta take some meds.”

Clint makes a noise, not quite a groan. A half-hearted complaint he’s lodging with no one. Clint never complains like he expects anyone to do anything about it.

“Yeah, I know,” Jason says. “But I’ll get you pizza.”

Clint tips against him and nuzzles his face into the side of Jason’s neck. It’s difficult to tell whether he does that because he’s feeling affectionate or dizzy. Knowing Clint, he’s probably hoping to use one to cover for the other.

“C’mon,” Jason says, and turns off the water.

\- -

It’s a bit of an undertaking, getting Clint into bed. He’s not deliberately unhelpful, just exhausted and uncoordinated. Jason checks the stitches and changes the bandages. The cut on his side is going to scar, but Clint managed, somehow, to avoid hitting anything that would require longer hospitalization.

Jason has no idea what the hell he would’ve done if Clint had cut into any of his organs. Of course, if he had, he probably wouldn’t’ve made it to Jason’s place to begin with.

But it’s hard to bet against Barton. He’s sturdier than he seems. The longer Jason knows him, the less he trusts the impression that Clint’s held together by spit and gum and good instincts. There’s a steel core to Barton that’s hard to see past the chaos at surface level.

Clint’s undertrained, underprepared, underpaid, and undersupplied. He’s young, and he’s broke, and he’s all alone. He’s permanently about three full weeks behind on a sane amount of sleep. He recycles arrows; he wears secondhand clothes. He seems to carry every damn thing he owns in a bag he lost sometime in the past forty-eight hours.

But he’s still alive. He’s alive, and he’s been taking out big names. Targets that SHIELD couldn’t get to. People Batman hasn’t stopped.

It’s a shame, really, that Clint’s something of a two-bit operation. Because if he had better resources, if he had someone half-competent by his side, Jason can’t imagine what he’d be capable of.

Not that Clint’s ever shown any interest in being a team player. He doesn’t even show much of an interest in whatever friends-with-benefits-and-ammo situation they’ve fallen into. Clint’s always the one who leaves. Jason’s never once kicked him out. In the beginning, Jason had to launch detailed containment protocols to keep Clint from trying to sneak out in the middle of the night. And he’s tamed him some now, sure, but Clint still gets flighty the second he feels pinned in.

Hell, sometimes it seems like he gets flighty for no Goddamn reason at all.

Although Jason has some idea, now, what those reasons might be.

He had his suspicions. He knows the signs. He’s seen them, and he’s lived them, and he knows them. Still, it had hit like a steel-toed kick to the teeth, when he pulled Clint’s medical records and saw the irregularities in the x-rays, all the old healed fractures.

He’s not a doctor. But he remembers staring up at his x-rays in the Batcave. He knows what it looks like, when someone gets knocked around too much when they’re young. You wouldn’t know it, looking at Clint now, with all that freckled skin and smooth muscle, the broad shoulders and the easy, athletic way he carries himself. Damage can be hidden, but it leaves its marks, leaves scars and calluses and dense patches of bone. Some hits land hard enough that the body remembers them forever.

All of Jason’s old hits got washed clean. A dip in the Lazarus Pit, and he’s fresh and new, clear-skinned, whole-boned. No scars, no fractures. No fingers that curl up crooked or joints that ache before storms.

Talia told him once that he used to have an autopsy scar. Seems like a hell of thing to tell someone. Seems deliberately cruel, to put the idea in Jason’s head that some stranger had run their fingers all over every part of him, peeled his skin back, stared right into the ugly heart of him. But there’s a lot that Jason wishes Talia had kept to herself.

The point is, looking now, no one could tell what happened to Jason when he was a kid. But nobody washed Clint’s secrets away, and Jason found them.

He found the records, too. The news articles. He tries not to be an asshole about it. God knows he learned from Bruce what it feels like to have your past dissected by someone you trust. But he’d been curious. He’d been worried, a little, that maybe Clint came out of some kind of training facility, that maybe there were others like him out there with less ethical leanings.

But Clint looks to be a one-off. A unique quirk of absolutely nothing, something blooming out of bare dirt and fields. A kid in Iowa, born to a drunk father and a young mother. Taken to the ER a couple times for accidents at home, and then never taken again. Orphaned at nine, when his father took a highway median at 80 miles an hour and killed himself and his wife on impact.

There are a couple years’ worth of spotty records from Clint’s time in the system, and then there’s nothing for damn near a decade. Except rumors about a circus that Jason’s finding more and more credible.

Clint came from nowhere. No one built him; he shaped himself. And he’s got clumsy edges and old scars, no backup plans, no safety nets. He takes petty cash to kill international criminals. He watches every entry, every exit, and he knows every stray dog that lives within a two-mile radius of Jason’s apartment.

Jason thinks Clint’s probably the most amazing thing he’s ever found. He thinks, if Bruce had caught Clint stealing the tires off the Batmobile all those years ago, they’d all live in a better, safer world now.

But Bruce found Jason, and nobody found Clint. And that’s the way the world tends to work, so Jason doesn’t know why the hell he feels so aggrieved about it.

He forces himself to refocus on the current situation.

He checks the locks, checks his phone, checks up on all the random Gotham bullshit that’s kicked off since he took himself off the roster. He sets an alarm on his phone for thirty minutes before Clint needs to take his next dose, and then he resolves to rest.

When he slides into bed, Clint tenses and stirs, but he relaxes after his eyes flutter open just long enough to trace the outline of Jason’s face.

“Remembered,” Clint says, face mashed into his pillow. “Know some Russian.”

Jason smiles. Of course Clint knows some Russian. Clint seems to know a little of everything he needs to. “Oh, yeah?”

“Mhm,” Clint says. And then, in a muffled tone frayed with sleep, with an accent both hilarious and endearing, he graphically invites Jason to go climb on a dick. A second later, on the end of an exhale that seems to drop him straight back into sleep, he sweetly murmurs that Jason is a train station whore.

 _Oh shit,_ Jason thinks, as his heart does something cataclysmic in his chest. _Oh, motherfuck, I’m falling in love with him._

\- -

Jason means to take a nap, but he’s a bit distracted by his emotional crisis. Which is for the best, in the end, because it means he’s awake enough to handle Steph’s phone call, even after she chooses to open with: “Hey, thanks for your bullshit. It’s a real joy not being the least favorite anymore.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Jason says, as he rubs at his face and slaps the coffeemaker awake. “You’re always the least favorite. I don’t think he even remembers your name half the time.”

“Out of sight, out of mind, off the bad list,” she says, sounding remarkably chipper for someone only recently promoted to _not-quite-least-favorite_. But then, she never takes Bruce’s bullshit as personally as Jason does. “He tossed your apartment.”

“Which one?” Jason yawns into the phone.

“Oh, three or four of them, I think,” Steph says. “Are you being the Russian crime lord right now? I know you like that lifestyle.”

“Oh, fuck off.” Jason rolls his eyes. No one’s ever going to let him forget that time he took over the drug trade in Gotham. Like Dick hasn’t had equally stupid weekends. “He’s not a crime lord. He’s just a low-level shithead with deep pockets.”

She hums into the phone. “Tim’s looking for you, too.”

“What’s Drake want from me?” Jason thumps the coffeemaker, and it beeps piteously at him. He gives it a remorseful pat on its shiny stainless steel side.

“Something to do with some _titushky_ down from New York,” she says. There’s a series of clatters in the background, but nothing that sounds like gunfire. “I’m looking into it. Figured you’d be busy.”

Jason doesn’t know that he’s _busy_ , exactly, but he’s damn sure not leaving Clint alone for a minimum of forty-eight hours. “I always liked you best.”

She huffs a pointedly skeptical breath. “Sure.”

“I did,” Jason says. “I do. Founding members of the Dead Robins Club, blondie. It’s a sacred bond.”

“Yeah, I didn’t actually die.”

“Yeah, I know, you fucking poser. But you came close enough.” He pats the coffeemaker again as it burbles to life. “Hey, you ever think about how fucked up it is that I got a creepy death monument in the Batcave, and you didn’t?”

“No,” Stephanie says, in that barbed drawl she trots out whenever she really wants everyone to know how sarcastic she’s being. “I’ve never once thought about that.”

Jason grimaces. “Next time you die, I’ll make you an altar.”

“Oh, fancy,” Steph says. “An altar. Gonna burn some incense?”

Jason considers the idea as he fishes a coffee cup out of the cabinet. “Figure I’ll probably just burn the hearts of whoever killed you.”

Steph laughs. She sounds thrilled, and maybe a little flattered. “You’re a fucking nightmare, Todd. No wonder you’re the least favorite.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Jason says. “So B’s looking for me?”

She makes a non-committal noise. “ _Looking_ ,” she says, “I don’t know. Making it generally known that he wants to talk to you, yeah. Brooding about you. Using this as an excuse to snoop around all your safe houses. But I dunno if he’s really decided he actually wants to find you yet.”

At this point, Jason’s spent damn near half his life pissing off Bruce Wayne, so he’s familiar with the response pattern. He figures, since he hasn’t actually killed anyone, the repercussions will be limited to the typical passive-aggressive bullshit, like rerouting GCPD’s upcoming stings into Red Hood territory, or showing up to loom around while Jason’s on patrol, or having Alfred lure Jason into a family dinner just so he can loudly extol the virtues of _collaborative crime-fighting_ and _communication-oriented action plans_.

Like Bruce isn’t a walking roach motel of information.

It’s a good sign, probably, that there have been some unaccounted-for bodies dropped in Gotham, and Bruce isn’t already crashing through the nearest window to preemptively throw Jason into a load-bearing wall. That’s a gesture of trust, Jason figures. Dizzying new heights of stability in their always-tempestuous working relationship.

Jason ponders the life expectancy of that trust once Bruce figures out he’s been sleeping with a hitman. Not that Bruce should have any room to judge, considering the fact that his roster of exes could be mistaken for a copy of INTERPOL’s most wanted list, but Bruce holds the moral high ground like a birthright.

“Hey, Steph,” he says, as he pours himself some coffee. “You’re reasonably well-adjusted, right?”

Steph cackles into the phone. She laughs so long and so loud that Jason thinks maybe he should hang up, give her a chance to compose herself. “Oh my God,” she says, “ _reasonably well-adjusted_. By whose standards? Todd, we all oozed out of the same dumpster.”

“Speak for yourself,” he says, offended. “I chewed my way out of that dumpster.”

She giggles some more and then makes an audible effort to sober herself up. He recognizes the calming breathing pattern. They both learned it from Alfred. “Why do you ask? You having some kind of problem?”

He likes how she asks it. Teasing, kinda. Like it’s a joke without teeth, something safe. He thinks it’s a Goddamn shame that he caught that crowbar with his face right before she came around. They’re fine now, of course. Steady and sturdy and stronger for all the shit they went through, but he thinks they could’ve counterbalanced each other a bit back when they both needed it most. It would’ve been good for both them, knowing each other when they were younger.

“Not a problem,” Jason says. “Not yet. I think I’m kinda emotionally compromised.”

Steph hums thoughtfully. “Over that guy you stole from the hospital?”

“I didn’t _steal_ him,” Jason says. “I rescued him.”

She laughs again, cheerful and bright. “ _Rescued_ ,” she says. “Damn. You’ve got it bad, huh? Well, I wish I could help, Jay, but my last two relationships ended in arson. If you need advice, maybe try Dick. He falls in love with every redhead who feeds him.”

The last thing Jason wants is relationship advice from _Dick Grayson_. Fuck’s sake. Jason once accidentally told him that he’d slept with the same person twice, and Dick had practically drawn up a wedding registry.

“I’m not telling Dick,” Jason says. “He’ll start planning another bachelor party.”

“I don’t know why you told me if you don’t want a party,” she says. “I’m already getting quotes from strippers.”

“You don’t get— fuck’s sake,” Jason says. “That’s not how strippers work.”

“Maybe now how the strippers _you_ hire work,” Steph says. “But I’ve got classier taste.”

Jason closes his eyes and prays for an aneurism. “I cannot convey to you,” he says, “the extent to which I never, ever wanna discuss your taste in strippers with you.”

She snickers again. “But, really, I’m happy for you. Seriously. Introduce me sometime.”

“It’s not like that,” Jason says. “I mean, he’s not—I don’t think he’s gonna stick around to meet the family or anything.”

She’s quiet for a few seconds. “Okay,” she says. With no warning, her voice goes steely-sweet. “Then I’ll introduce myself.” 

“Absolutely not,” Jason says. “Fuck you. No way.”

“Be by later,” she says, half-singing it. “Don’t worry. It’s a business meeting. I’ll bring updates on all the bullshit you’re missing.”

“Don’t fucking come here,” he says. “I mean it, Steph. You’re not welcome.”

She laughs again. “If I gave a damn where I was welcome, I never would’ve made it into this Bat-cult at all.”

Jason has no argument for that. Not really. And before he can invent one, she hangs up.

\- -

Jason wakes Clint up with coffee, toast, and an apology. “Sorry,” he says, as Clint flails in baffled alarm before settling warily back on his pillow. “Batgirl’s coming over.”

Clint blinks at him blearily over the rim of his coffee. “Who’s doing what?”

“Batgirl,” Jason says. “She’ll be here soon. Drink your coffee.”

Clint elbows his way up to a better approximation of vertical. He swigs his coffee like he thinks there’s bourbon at the bottom of the mug. “Batgirl,” he repeats. He seems to chew on it, like the name _Batgirl_ is something he has to work into smaller pieces before he can swallow it.

Like maybe, somehow, he doesn’t like the taste.

Which is bullshit, because Clint’s known that Jason is Red Hood since that very first night, when they were strangers to each other. When Clint knew damn near nothing else about Jason, he knew that. And so it’s bullshit, if Clint’s been harboring some secret aversion to vigilantes this whole time.

Although that doesn’t seem likely, given the way Clint had sounded when he said, _You save people_.

Like Jason was something special. Something almost holy, given all the reverence in his tone.

And if Red Hood’s almost holy, then Batgirl should be downright divine. Because Steph might be grittier than Drake or Dick, but she’s gentler, too, when she can be. There’s more room in her for mercy. She knows what it’s like to be on the wrong side of things. And that’s something neither Dick nor Drake have ever really understood.

“Yeah,” Jason says. “She wants to meet you.”

Clint nods. He looks strange. For a full minute, Jason can’t track the reason, and then he realizes Clint’s wearing the face he wears when they meet up in loud bars or sketchy neighborhoods. He’s dulled down and closed-off, looks blank and uninteresting. He’s camouflaging, right there in Jason’s bed.

“Jesus,” Jason says, “she’s not gonna arrest you or anything. I wouldn’t let her do that. You know that, right?”

Clint’s eyebrows pull together. He gives Jason a searching look. “It would be okay,” he says, “if she did. I mean, if she had to. If you had to let her. It would be okay.”

Jason stares at him. He can’t for the life of him track what direction Clint thinks they’re running. “Listen,” he says, leaning close, “no one’s gonna take you away from me until you’re ready to go. Okay? No one.”

Clint looks at him like he’s never seen anything like Jason before, like he’s seeing him for the very first time. And then he packs all of that up, puts it away, and he’s just blank-faced and empty all over again.

Without a word, he twists away, swings his legs over the side of the bed. He climbs to his feet, grabs a throwing knife off the wall. “Okay, Jay,” he says. “Let’s talk to Batgirl.”


	5. Chapter 5

If Jason has opinions on the knife Clint grabs off the wall, he doesn’t share them. Clint would’ve gone for the bow and those new arrows, but he knows damn well he can’t draw it without popping a stitch or two. He’ll do it if he needs to, but the knife should work well enough.

He’s not going to use it.

He’s _probably_ not going to use it.

“More coffee,” he says, as he maneuvers his way into the main room.

“Hell no,” Jason volleys back. He tugs the fridge door open and stares into the depths. “Yellow Gatorade or red?”

“ _Coffee_ ,” Clint repeats. His head is still pounding, and his mouth tastes like sand, and he knows he’s dehydrated, but he wants to sharpen his brain a bit before Batgirl shows up. Water won’t help as much as coffee.

Jason shoots him an eloquent sort of _fuck off, you fuck_ expression over his shoulder and then uncaps a yellow Gatorade and passes it over. “Drink that,” he says. “Then maybe more coffee.”

It would be ungrateful, probably, to tip the bottle over into the sink. Anyway, Clint’s kind of charmed by the novelty of it. He can’t remember the last time someone cared enough to argue with him about something like this. It’s been a long time since anyone tried to stop him from hurting himself.

“Tell me about her,” Clint says, as he begrudgingly slides the bottle closer.

“Batgirl?” Jason asks, like there’s any other girl they’ve been discussing. He grimaces a little and then shrugs. “She’s got news, I guess.”

Clint sips the lemon-lime salty-sweet abomination. On the other side of the island, Jason’s pouring tap water into a Wonder Woman-themed coffee mug. “You said she wanted to meet me,” Clint says.

But not, apparently, to arrest him. Which doesn’t make sense. Clint can’t imagine what the hell _else_ she’d want with him. Maybe she needs someone killed. Maybe that’s how these Bats do it, outsource the worst of what needs done so they don’t have to do it themselves.

But that doesn’t seem right. From what Clint’s gathered about the way things work, it seems like the Bats wouldn’t need to hire someone to do their dirty work. They already have Jason.

Across the kitchen island, Jason sips at his water and looks unimpressed. “I told you,” he says, “no one’s arresting you.”

“And I said it’d be fine,” Clint counters, “if they did. Jason, it’s going to happen. I’m gonna fuck up. You can’t just--”

“Can,” Jason says. “Will.”

Clint sets the plastic bottle on the counter. He breathes in. The dull throbbing in his temples layers over the vaguely nauseating ache in his side, and he wants, in that moment, to headbutt the marble countertop hard enough to put himself under for a while.

Ever since the circus, ever since the fall. Ever since Barney left him bleeding after the job went bad. He’s just been chasing after nothing, trying to keep his head above water, and he doesn’t know how the hell every choice he makes keeps turning out to be the wrong one.

Jason is the only nice thing he’s had any part of for damn near the last dozen years. And he should’ve known that whatever bad luck was on him was only going to spread. He should’ve known he was toxic. He’s always been some kind of cancer.

“I don’t know why you’re doing all of this,” Clint says. The plastic bottle crinkles and buckles in his hand. He can’t make himself stay still. “I told you. I don’t want you hurt over this. Over _me_. I’m not worth it. I’m fucking--”

“Hey,” Jason says.

“I’m _nothing_ , Jay,” Clint says. “Do you know what I am? I didn’t finish middle school. I’ve got nothing. I’ve got _no one_. My own brother left me to die, and I’m the only family he has. I kill people for money. I’ve got no other skills. I’m not worth fucking _anything_. I am sure as hell not worth you.”

“ _Clint_.”

Jason’s voice is loud. He’s not quite yelling, but Clint flinches anyway. The Gatorade bottle spins on the marble and goes flying, lands halfway across the cavernous living room.

Clint heaves in air, and he’s stupid. He’s stupid and clumsy and loud and graceless. He’s a mess. He’s always such a fucking mess.

“Clint,” Jason says again. He’s quieter this time. But Clint still can’t look at him.

There’s a distant thump from the guestroom, the distinctive sound of a window opening, and then seconds later like the door swings open, and it’s almost a relief. Except then Batgirl steps inside with Robin at her heels, and Clint’s outflanked by people who spend their lives cleaning trash like him off the street. And Jason’s never treated him like that, but it’s different, Clint knows, when you’re around people who know better.

Plenty of people have been nice enough to him when he was the only one around. It’s not a pattern that tends to hold when there’s an audience.

“Sorry,” Batgirl says, into the tense silence that greets her. “Not the best time?”

“Oh, fuck’s sake,” Jason says, in very evident exasperation. “I told you not to come here at all. Of course it’s a bad time.”

She plants her hands on her hips. Clint’s not sure about the tactical merits of her leather-and-Kevlar jumpsuit, but she looks great wearing it. “Aren’t you going to introduce us to your guest?”

“I’m gonna introduce you to the concept of minding your own Goddamn business,” Jason says. “Leave him alone. He’s got nothing to do with anything.”

Batgirl takes a step forward, bee-lining toward Clint, and he straightens up, drops the knife from where he’d tucked it into his sleeve so that it settles into his palm. The weight is unfamiliar, but he can work with it. He can work with damn near anything; it’s the only reason he’s alive.

“Oh,” she says. He can’t read her expression past the mask, but her eyes look kinder than the situation merits. “Well, Red, I see why you like him.”

“Stop it,” Jason says. “You said you needed to talk business.”

“Are we going to talk in front of him?” Robin’s tone is impressively serene. His eyes go briefly to the knife in Clint’s hand, but they don’t linger. When he catches Clint staring, he tips him an amiable nod.

“Well, he’s been fucking invited,” Jason says, “and you two shitheads broke in, so. Yeah. We’re gonna talk in front of him.”

“Fine,” Batgirl says. She waves at Clint, one-handed and casual. “I’m Batgirl.”

“I’m,” Clint says, and then blanks. He glances at Jason. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to say. He doesn’t want to cause problems for Jason. “I’m…not.”

“Not what?” she asks.

“He’s not Batgirl,” Jason says. “Jesus, he just said it. Can we focus, please?”

Batgirl crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m trying to be polite.”

“I’m trying not to throw both of you through a window,” Jason says. “Fuck’s sake.”

“Clint,” Clint says, because he’d say almost anything to drag this conversation away from the confrontation that feels inevitable. “I’m Clint.”

Jason makes a grumbling, aggravated noise. “You don’t have to tell them anything.”

“I know,” Clint says.

“Are you Hawkeye?” Robin’s voice is still that inscrutable, soft-toned, flat-line of neutrality. It’s the first time he’s addressed Clint directly. And there’s a subtle shift of his posture as he asks, a reallocation of his body weight.

He’s not tensing up to fight, exactly. Just reorienting towards a threat.

Clint swallows. The knife feels awkward in his grip. He doesn’t even know who he’d use it on. Batgirl seems louder, more proactive. But there’s something about Robin’s impassive vigilance that makes Clint want to go for him first.

But he wouldn’t go after either one of them. He’s hurt a lot of people, but they were all bad people. He’s never hurt anyone like them. He wouldn’t.

The knife is for show. For self-defense, if he doesn’t have to push it too far.

He doesn’t want to go to prison. He’s made so many enemies. He wouldn’t survive for long. And it would be an ugly death. Brutal. But if his choice is prison or gut-stabbing Robin, he’ll take prison in a heartbeat.

All he wanted, for years, was to shoot his bow, stay with his brother, and survive a while longer. He never wanted any of this. But it doesn’t matter what he wants, and it never did.

“You don’t have to answer,” Robin says. There’s something cultured in the way he speaks, something expensive. Like what Clint really needed was to be outclassed in yet another arena. “But there are people in town looking for Hawkeye, and I wanted to pass along a warning.”

“A warning,” Clint says, tone flat with disbelief. “To a hitman.”

Batgirl’s head snaps around, and she stares at Jason, who shrugs with the kind of blasé disregard most people reserve for getting caught sneaking potato chips late at night.

“A _hitman_ ,” Batgirl repeats, although she sounds more cheerfully scandalized than actually upset.

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Robin says. He’s staring intently at Clint, head tipped away from Jason.

“Yeah,” Jason says, “you wouldn’t.”

Clint doesn’t understand what Jason expects to gain from this loyalty. He doesn’t have a damn thing to offer him.

“There are some Ukrainians looking for him,” Robin says. “Mercenaries.”

And that’s news to Clint, because the only Ukrainians he knows are the assholes he pissed off back in New York.

“Ukrainians?” Jason asks.

“Yeah.” Batgirl shrugs. “They run around in athletic wear and call everyone _bro_. They called _me_ ‘bro.’”

“Jesus,” Jason says, “they could’ve at least called you ‘Bat-bro.’”

“Right?” she says, hands held out beseechingly in front of her. “ _Right_? That’s what I said.”

“Wait,” Clint says. “the tracksuit Draculas? Those guys are Ukrainian mercenaries?”

Batgirl tips him a bright, delighted smile. “Tracksuit Draculas,” she repeats. “That’s adorable. I’m gonna call them that.”

Ukrainian mercenaries. Shit. That would explain why they were harder to kill than originally anticipated. It would also explain how they’d managed to regroup so quickly after he took out the guys who’d been bothering the residents of that apartment building in Bed-Stuy.

“Not that he knows anything about it,” Jason says. “Not that he’s had any business with them, or Hawkeye, or any of it.”

“Red,” Batgirl says. She’s giving him a look that Clint thinks might be fond. “That ship’s pretty far out of the harbor, huh?”

“Well, tug that bastard back in,” Jason says. “I don’t need B breathing down my neck about this.”

“Be a little hypocritical,” Robin says. “Considering--”

“Talia,” Batgirl says.

“Talia,” Jason says, at the same time.

Robin blinks. “Talia,” he agrees, although he sounds vaguely irritated at having been beaten to the punch. “Exactly, yes.”

“Look,” Clint says, “can someone please tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Well,” Batgirl says, stretching the word into two syllables. “It kinda seems like some _titushky_ have shown up looking for the fugitive hitman Jason’s hiding.”

“Also, there’s a SHIELD agent,” Robin says. “And I think he’s about to walk into a trap.”

Clint drops his knife. “ _Coulson_?” he says. “Coulson’s going to--- what trap?”

“You didn’t fucking lead with that?” Jason demands, scowling at Robin. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“We have some time,” Robin says. “I’m going to take care of it. I didn’t think it’d be especially relevant to either one of you, considering the situation.”

“Fuck you, ‘the situation,’” Jason says. “You’re just as bad as Batman. You weren’t going to tell me, because you don’t tell anybody anything.”

“I wasn’t going to tell you,” Robin says, that preternatural patience finally showing signs of running thin, “because the agent in question is currently looking for the _wanted fugitive_ you’re harboring.”

Jason throws his hands up. “Stop making a big deal about it. For fuck’s sake, everyone in this room is a wanted fugitive.”

Clint stands up. The barstool wobbles on two legs and then clatters loudly to the floor. He swipes the knife off the counter and starts scanning the area for anything even vaguely resembling appropriate footwear.

Finally, and with no small amount of regret, he gestures at Batgirl. “Hey, can I borrow your boots?”

She blinks at him. Her eyes go from him, to her feet, and then back to him. “I’m using them,” she says.

“I know,” he acknowledges. “I’m sorry. But I gotta go save Agent Coulson.”

“The SHIELD agent that’s trying to bring you in?” she asks.

“He’s a nice guy,” Clint says. “He collects Captain America trading cards. He let me go once because it was my birthday, and he could’ve headshotted me a half-dozen times, and he never tried. So I can’t—I mean, he’s a good person, and he doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

There’s a long, awkward span of silence. Batgirl clears her throat.

“You know,” she says. “Jason. If B ever meets this guy--”

“I know,” Jason says. “I _know_. Adoption papers inked by dawn. I fucking know.”

Clint looks between them. “Look, I’ll go barefoot if I have to, but--”

“I have boots for you, Clint. Settle down,” Jason says. “But you really don’t need to go. Robin could handle it alone. Batgirl’s gonna go with him. And _I’ll_ go, if you want me to.”

Clint stares at him. “ _No_ ,” he says. “No, I don’t want you to go with them. I want you to stop taking risks for me. I want you to be _safe_.”

There’s another series of beats where nobody says anything. And then Batgirl huffs out a skeptical breath. “Oh, yeah,” she says. “Good call, Jay. This one’s definitely not invested in you at all.”

“I fucking hate you,” Jason says, running a hand down his face. “I hate all of you.”

\- -

Half an hour later, Clint’s as suited up as he can get. Everything hurts, and he’s exhausted. Walking in Jason’s heavy boots makes him feel like he’s trudging through mud. He just wants to curl up somewhere warm and sleep until winter’s over.

But Phil Coulson is walking into a trap, and like hell is Clint going to let someone like Coulson die over someone like him.

“Should I be jealous?” Jason asks, as he’s double-checking the straps on Clint’s body armor. It’s entirely unnecessary, but Clint doesn’t mind him being so close.

“Of what?” Clint asks. “It’s your body armor.”

“No,” Jason says. He laughs into Clint’s neck. “Of this SHIELD agent you’re running off to save.”

Sometimes, Clint stares right into the depths of Jason’s sky-blue eyes and has no fucking clue what’s going on behind them.

“Didn’t know we had that kind of thing,” Clint says. What he means is: _I didn’t know I was anything worth getting jealous over._ But he’s starting to develop an aversion to the way Jason’s face falls every time Clint says something unpleasant about himself.

Jason shrugs. There’s something curling up the edges of his mouth, but Clint can’t call whether it wants to be a smile or a smirk. “I’m not gonna keep bothering you about it,” he says, like that makes any fucking sense. Like somehow he thinks he’s been _bothering_ Clint about something.

“What are you talking about?” Clint asks.

Jason gives him a searching look and then sighs, almost-smirk evaporating in a grimacing twist of his lips. “Forget it,” he says. “Let’s go save your SHIELD agent.”

“He’s not my SHIELD agent,” Clint says. Coulson’s the SHIELD agent who picked up Clint’s file, apparently, so Coulson has some claim to him, but Clint’s not sure ownership goes both ways.

“You just don’t want him hurt on your behalf,” Jason says. “I know. I get it.”

“I don’t want anyone hurt on my behalf,” Clint says. “Coulson. _You_.”

Jason grins, a switchblade of a smile. It flashes and disappears, dangerous and sharp. “No one’s gonna hurt me, Barton. Don’t worry your pretty head.”

Clint’s been around Jason long enough to know that he’s probably right. There’s not much that can damage him, not seriously. Jason’s dangerous in a way that hurts Clint to think about. Because Clint’s been taking hits since he was old enough to stand in slapping range, but he’s seen Jason fight.

Clint never had much formal training, but he knows just enough to appreciate the level of Jason’s skill. Someone spent years training him. And teaching someone to fight can be an act of love, but nobody picks up a pain tolerance like that at the hands of people who care about them.

“I mean it,” Clint says. “Jason. Stop putting yourself in shitty situations because I’m in them.”

Jason raises his eyebrows, chin tipped sideways. There’s something playful in his eyes. He hooks his fingers into the beltloops on either side of Clint’s hips, and Clint lets him tug him close.

“C’mon, Barton,” he says. “The situation can’t be that shitty if I get to be there with you.”

Clint stares at him and waits for any piece of that to make sense. “What,” he says, when it stubbornly refuses to resolve into anything even a little bit logical.

“I know you aren’t,” Jason says. “I mean, I know you don’t _stay_ anywhere. I don’t blame you. I looked you up. I know about your family. I don’t blame you for never wanting to put down roots again.”

Clint doesn’t flinch when Jason says it. _I know about your family_. He expected it a lot earlier, honestly. He’s not _surprised_. He just figured, once Jason knew more about him, he’d be less interested in spending any time with him.

The only surprising thing about Jason looking into who he used to be is that he’s still hanging around Clint afterwards.

Something is happening that Clint doesn’t understand. Jason’s not looking at him. His hands are still on Clint’s hips, but they’re careful. Light. There’s no pressure anywhere, like Jason’s a wisp of fog that’ll fade as soon as Clint breathes out.

He’s closed-off. Shut down. Protecting something. Himself, probably.

God, Clint wishes he knew what Jason wanted.

“I don’t know what you’re asking me,” Clint says, because he might as well. He’s an idiot and a fuck-up and a disaster, and he might as well be honest about it. He thinks, in that moment, he’d give Jason anything he asked for. He’d cut his stupid, lovesick heart right out of his chest.

“ _Hand check_ ,” Batgirl yells, whacking her fist against the doorframe in three sharp, percussive bursts. “I’m coming in there, and I’m cutting off anything I’m not supposed to see.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jason says, immediately putting space between him and Clint. “I’m giving you cholera for Christmas, I swear to God.”

Batgirl pokes her head into the room. “We need to head out. Your SHIELD buddy’s on the move.”

Jason makes a face like maybe he wants to argue some more, but Clint shakes his head, squares up his shoulders. “Jay,” he says, pitched too quiet to be overheard.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jason says. “But be careful with this hero bullshit. It tends to stick.”


	6. Chapter 6

Clint takes the gun Jason hands him without complaint, which is how Jason knows that he should’ve doubled-up Clint’s pain meds and poured him back into bed instead of letting him tag along on this rescue mission. But it’s not like Jason’s never limped his way through patrol, and this seems personal to Clint, so he doesn’t say anything. He just resolves to make sure Clint doesn’t wander into any situations that require a high level of expertise.

“Where’s your bike?” Clint asks. He steps out of the service elevator and into the parking garage, gazing around with an attentiveness that suggests he still has no memory of being carried through this place a little over a day ago.

If Jason hadn’t spent several memorable moments of his life watching the easy roll of Clint’s hips when he walks, he probably wouldn’t even notice the way Clint’s favoring his side. Clint moves like someone used to fighting wounded.

Jason takes a moment to reflect on the idea that wrapping Clint in bubble wrap would probably only serve to piss him off.

“We’re not taking the bike,” Jason says. “You’d pop your stitches on the first sharp turn.”

“I’d be fine,” Clint say. And Jason would laugh at him, but his tone is too casual, too offhand to be deliberately stubborn. He meets Jason’s highly dubious expression with one of blank confusion. “Skin heals.”

 _Skin heals_ , Jason thinks. Fuck’s sake.

“Sure does,” he says, instead of any of the other much more incendiary comments crowding up behind his teeth. “If you don’t keep ripping it open.”

Clint makes a strange, doubtful face at him and then lifts one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “The bike’s better than walking,” he says.

The way he says it implies that he honestly, legitimately believes Jason’s going to make him walk halfway across town with seven stitches in his side and the blood of two separate strangers currently keeping him vertical. Like he thinks, somehow, that the option is the bike or his feet.

Like he doesn’t think Jason cares enough to call him a Goddamn cab.

“Have you ever,” Jason says, “just, like, _once_ in your life, had someone take care of you?”

Clint’s face goes blank with the sudden efficiency of blinds closing. A heartbeat later, he looks away. “Well,” he says, “I can’t seem to make you stop, so. Yeah.”

Jason wasn’t ready to rank in the top ten of that list. He is vastly unprepared to be the only entry.

He should say something funny, probably. Something that’ll break the tension. But he doesn’t have any of that to offer, so he just hip-checks Clint gently in the direction of the cushiest car he keeps here, the one that’ll jostle Clint the least.

“You’re damn right you can’t,” he says, instead of any of the other, safer options.

\- -

The Ukrainian mercenaries – the _tracksuit Draculas_ , as Clint called them – found Clint’s bag when they went back to pick up the bodies of their dead friends. Which explains, in part, why Bruce hasn’t been filling Jason’s voicemail box with moral treatises while simultaneously trying to steal his houseguest.

It probably helps that Bruce only had the number for the phone Jason left at the hospital. Steph is the only Bat with his emergency number, because Drake would sell Jason out immediately, Dick would last approximately five second longer, and Babs’ neutrality is not to be fucked with.

“So the tracksuits have my bag,” Clint says. “My bow?”

“And your phone,” Jason says. “They’ve been using it to lure Coulson into an ambush. They think he’s your partner.”

Clint makes a face. “Shit,” he says. “That’s my fault.”

Jason rolls his eyes. God knows he has his own unhelpful personality quirks, but he’s running a little low on patience with this particular trait. “Christ, Clint,” he says. “If the sun went supernova tomorrow, you’d think it was your fault for using too much light.”

Clint works his jaw like he wants to say something mean, but Jason’s noticed that Clint has no natural talent in that direction. Instead, he just treats Jason to a flat, unimpressed look that’s just bitchy enough to be irresistibly charming.

“First of all,” Clint says, “fuck off. Second of all, they think he’s my partner because he’s the only contact saved in my phone.”

Jason considers asking again if he should get jealous, but Clint doesn’t appear to be in the mood to appreciate the humor of the situation. Anyway, it’s nice for Coulson that he gets his number saved, but it’s sweeter, in its way, that Clint memorized Jason’s number and diligently deletes all of their conversations.

Although Jason doesn’t doubt for a second that Clint could’ve done the same for Coulson, which begs the question of why he didn’t.

“Why’d you save his number?” he asks.

Clint shifts carefully in his seat, fusses with the seatbelt to relocate the pressure away from his side. “I thought, if someone had that phone, they’d probably killed me. And he calls me kind of a lot. So maybe, if it rang--”

“They’d pick up, and he’d know about them.” Jason kicks it around in his head. He doesn’t like the idea that Clint has to keep bootstrapping safety nets out of nothing, but he’s impressed, all over again, by how good at it he is.

“Yeah,” Clint says. “And he’s, you know. Like you, kinda.”

“Like me,” Jason says, “kinda.”

Clint fidgets in his seat again, stares hard out the window. “You know,” he says. “You both kill bad people.”

Jason curls his hands a little tighter around the steering wheel and doesn’t scream _You do too, Goddamn it_ at the top of his lungs. No one comes around to give him a sticker or a ribbon for it, but he feels accomplished anyway.

“Clint,” he says, in a tone that even Alfred would probably rate _reasonably polite_ , “you kill bad people too.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, “for money.”

“For money,” Jason repeats. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel, and he doesn’t start yelling. He’s exhibiting a lot of growth, as a person, and he’s pissed as hell that no one’s around who’d appreciate the extent of that growth. “You know, I’ve acquired a lot of money as a sort of incidental bonus to the larger goal of killing shitty people.”

Clint tucks his chin toward his chest. “It’s not the same thing.”

“It could be,” Jason says. And there are a dozen gentler, smarter, _better_ ways to introduce the concept, but gentle, smart, and better have never really been his trademarks. “If you started working with me, it’d be the exact same thing.”

The look Clint gives him suggests that Jason’s out of his fucking mind. “I can’t work with _you_ ,” he says. And Jason’s just starting to work his way toward being offended by the horror on his face when he elaborates with: “I’m not—I’m an ex-carnie serial killer, Jason. Batman wouldn’t let me _near_ you.”

Jason mouths the words to himself: _ex-carnie serial killer_.

Well, at least the circus backstory has been plausibly confirmed.

“Important thing to know about Batman,” Jason says, instead of tackling the subtle fiscal and philosophical nuances between _killer for hire_ and _killer for recreational purposes_. “He doesn’t own me. He doesn’t decide who I work with.”

Clint makes a skeptical noise in the back of his throat. “You wear a _bat_ on your _chest_.”

Jason huffs out a breath and tries to summarize the summary of that whole shitshow. “That’s in-group signaling,” he says. “Not an oath of allegiance. And, anyway, I mostly wear it as a reminder to him, not me.”

“None of that makes sense,” Clint says. “I’m not on that much medication, Jason. And I’ve seen the way you are with all of them. They make you _nervous_. And I don’t want—look. SHIELD is bad enough. But I don’t want to get you in trouble, or hurt. I don’t want--”

“Hurt,” Jason repeats. “The fuck do you—what? You think Batman’s gonna come after me? You think--”

“Hasn’t he?” Clint say, loud enough to drown Jason out. “Hasn’t he already? You’re not the only one who can pull records, Jason. I read the articles. People took _pictures_. The two of you used to fight.”

Jason rubs at his throat. His fingers catch on the faint line of scar tissue. “That,” he says, and then stops. Clears his throat. “Jesus, Clint, that was a long time ago.”

Clint breathes out. The whole line of his body is tense. “Well,” he says, “I don’t want to be the reason it happens again.”

“You won’t be,” Jason says. “And, if you are, it’s worth it. For fuck’s sake, Clint, will you just listen to me when I talk? You’re worth it.”

“I’m not,” Clint says. “Jason, I’m not worth you getting hurt.”

Jason pulls into the warehouse where he’s supposed to meet the others, and he shifts around to face Clint, gives him a long look. “Clint, I get hurt damn near every night for people I’ve never met. What the hell makes you think you don’t make the cut? You’re more to me than this whole fucking city.”

“I’m not,” Clint says, again. And then, after searching Jason’s eyes, he shakes his head. “I shouldn’t be.”

Jason shakes his head, unbuckles his seatbelt, and shoves the door open. “Yeah, well, you don’t get to make that call.”

Clint makes his own way out of the car, a little slower, a little less steady. He gives Jason a fraught, forlorn look over the top of the car.

Jason wants to be angry, but all he can feel is a strange mix of sad and keyed-up. They’ll sort this out later, after the mercenaries are gone, and Coulson’s safe, and Clint’s back in bed, where he can rest.

“C’mon, Clint,” he says, “let’s go be good guys.”

\- -

The plan is to let Batgirl and Robin take the lead, but Jason cannot fathom a single Goddamn thing to be gained from letting Steph and Drake show up, flash their spindly little legs around, and be entirely too sweet to men who have already tried to kill Clint once in the past three days. So, when the Bats get held up dealing with an Ivy-related incident involving three investment bankers and a feisty bit of rose vine, Jason moves in without them.

The problem, which becomes apparent approximately ten seconds after they arrive on-scene, is that Phil Coulson does not actually need rescuing. Phil Coulson, who walks around looking like a lost census worker on his lunch break, is fully capable of looking after himself.

“Oh,” he says, when he looks up from handcuffing the final mercenary and finds Jason and Clint staring at him. “Hello, Clint. Nice to see you conscious again.”

“Hi, Coulson,” Clint says. He sounds a little _aw shucks_ about the whole thing. “Sorry I—you know. Skipped out. I know you probably had to file a lot of paperwork about that.”

Coulson shrugs. When he straightens up, Jason catches the tiniest flash of blood on his shirtsleeve before his jacket falls to cover it. Jason might’ve been inclined to be concerned about that, but, from the way Coulson’s moving, it’s not his blood.

“I appreciate the sentiment,” Coulson says, “but your apology is unnecessary. I’m very well-aware that you were only minimally involved in that particular escape, Barton.”

The look Jason catches immediately after that statement is more assessing than accusatory, although there’s an angle to Coulson’s eyebrow quirk that suggests he’s not entirely amused. 

Jason, who’s not technically here on Red Hood business and is hoping not to mix the ideas of _the man who held me at gunpoint_ and _the Goddamn Red Hood_ in Coulson’s brain, smiles from behind the same nondescript black mask he used to break into the hospital. It’s a half-face affair, covering the cheekbones and up, because a full black mask has certain connotations in this town, but he’s not feeling quite slutty enough for a domino.

“Hey,” he says. “You’re really taking the wind out of our sails on this whole rescue mission.”

“Likewise,” Coulson says and then gestures at Clint. “They said they had him.”

Clint’s quiet embarrassment kicks to new heights. He ducks his head. “Shit,” he says. “Sorry, Coulson.”

“They had pictures of you,” Coulson says, remarkably nonchalant as he goes for his phone. “They’re very dramatic. You’re tied to a chair, and the lighting’s terrible.”

Jason swivels around to stare at Clint. “Tied to a chair?”

Clint sighs, gustily. “Yeah, New York got kinda active, I guess.”

“Kind of active,” Jason repeats. “You _guess_.”

“Oh, he doesn’t tell you, either?” Coulson gives Jason a commiserating look. “The number of times I’ve tracked him by blood splatter.”

“Well, of course he doesn’t talk to you,” Jason says. “You’re trying to arrest him.”

“Recruit,” Coulson corrects, mildly. “I am trying to recruit him.”

Jason’s jaw drops. When he looks at Clint, he finds him industriously studying the nearest available exit route. “SHIELD is trying to _recruit_ you?”

Clint stares longing toward the broken window about fifteen yards away. “Shouldn’t we be leaving? He doesn’t need us.”

“I mean,” Jason says, “I know you said you weren’t gonna let some dickhead in a suit tell you who to kill, but--”

“ _Hey_ ,” Clint says, focus suddenly shifting back his direction. “I didn’t say Coulson. That wasn’t—he’s not a dickhead in a suit. Stop it.”

Jason holds his hands up. “Wow,” he says. “Okay.”

“Thank you,” Coulson says, with a soft little half-smile that Jason refuses to find endearing. “I appreciate that, Clint.”

“And, somehow, I am back to being jealous,” Jason says. “How the fuck is this my life?”

“I don’t know,” Batgirl says, as she drops out of the rafters like some kind of tacky showoff, like exactly the kind of girl who’s been spending too much time around Dick Grayson. “But I, for one, am fascinated by this whole series of developments.”

“I’ve contacted GCPD,” Robin reports, manifesting out of the gloom in the southwest corner of the room. “They’re five minutes out.”

Coulson considers both of them with a bland attentiveness that Jason privately thinks will do the pair of them some good. It’s nice, every time someone saunters along to check the egos of all the masks and capes in his life.

“Batgirl and Robin,” he says, looking back toward Jason. “You have interesting allies.”

“They’re more like ducklings I can’t shake,” Jason says.

“So you’d be one of the older ones, then.” He tips his head, sizes Jason up. “Wrong build for Nightwing.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jason says, “nobody’s got his ass. We know. We all know. You don’t have to bring it up.”

Before things can devolve further, Batgirl and Robin simultaneously tense up, heads cocking to the side. They share a brief look and then Drake leaves without further comment. Steph, who took Alfred’s lectures on manners to heart, manages a wave before she starts jogging away.

“Gotta go,” she says. “Gotham problems. You kids stay outta trouble, okay?” She spins around to give Jason dual finger-guns, which he privately considers insensitive, given their profession. “B’s getting loud about patrol.”

Which means Jason can probably swing one more night off before Bruce shows up to figure out why the hell he hasn’t been around.

“This town stays busy,” Coulson announces, to no one. He takes a casual step their direction, and Jason ponders whether it would be rude to draw a gun after such a prolonged bit of small talk. The answer is almost certainly yes, but Jason never got any gold stars from Alfred on etiquette.

“You aren’t taking him,” Jason says, gesturing toward Clint. “If that’s where you think this is going.”

Clint frowns, but Coulson smiles. “I think I deserve a bit more credit than that, Red Hood.”

Jason doesn’t blink. Beside him, Clint breathes in and out, even and measured.

It’s inconvenient, if Coulson knows his face and his mask, but it’s not as cataclysmic as it would be for Drake or Dick. After all, Jason Todd is dead, and a grave is a nice bit of barrier blocking the connection in the daisy chain of Red Hood, Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne, and Batman.

“Incidentally,” Coulson continues, tone thoughtful, “you’re on our recruitment list, as well.”

Jason laughs out loud. Fuck’s sake, he can barely deal with _Bruce_. God knows what he’d do with an actual bureaucracy.

“We’re gonna go,” Jason says. “We’re gonna go, and you’re gonna stay here and ask the nice GCPD officers who come along to check you for any undiagnosed head trauma.”

“Steady work,” Coulson says. “Steady paycheck. Regular access to medical care. People who’ll notice when you fall into a dumpster and impale yourself on scrap metal.”

Jason steps back, and Clint follows. Coulson doesn’t chase, but he watches them leave.

“Well,” he says, as they move toward the exit, “I’ll be in touch.”

\- -

Half an hour later, Jason plates freshly delivered pizza, preps Clint’s pills, and goes to climb into bed beside him. Clint’s propped up on pillows, martyring himself over another bottle of Gatorade, but he perks up considerably when he spots the pizza.

“Is there beer?” he asks, hopefully.

“There’s a fistful of antibiotics and pain meds,” Jason says.

Clint makes a mutinous face. “You know,” he says, “nobody would expect how much of a buzzkill you are.”

Jason snorts and pours the pills into Clint’s waiting hand. “Yeah, I really nurture that fuckboy aesthetic.”

Clint grumbles and knocks back his pills, chasing them with a mouthful of Gatorade. “Not my favorite of your fuck-related aesthetics,” he says.

Jason laughs and drops down into Clint’s mountain of pillows, burrowing in until their shoulders nestle together. “Yeah, well, it’s the only one you’re getting until those stitches come out, Barton. I am not taking you back to the hospital for sex injuries. That shit is embarrassing.”

Clint sighs like he is being personally wronged, but he doesn’t slow his predatory demolishing of the pizza Jason brought him.

“Hey,” Jason says. It would probably be smarter not to have this conversation at all. But Clint has a bad habit of sneaking out as soon as he has a clear exit, and, when he goes, Jason’s going to be left with memories of blood trails and mercenaries. “I meant it, you know. Earlier.”

Clint’s hand freezes a half inch above the next slice of pizza. He looks up at Jason, guarded and closed-off and impossible to read. “Meant what?”

Jason doesn’t want to lose this. It’s nice, what they have.

But he thinks if he doesn’t risk losing this, he might risk losing Clint entirely. Because Clint’s smart and skilled and cagey, but he’s just one archer, alone. And when Jason was alone, he died that way.

“I meant you could stay here. Stay with me. We’ll work together. Split the money, the work. It’s safer, with a partner.”

Clint stares at him. There’s a war behind his eyes, and Jason knows him just well enough to catch glimpses of it. But he can’t call which side’s winning. He thinks maybe there’s not a person alive who knows Clint well enough for that.

“Jason,” Clint says, “I keep telling you. I’m not right for it. I’m not a good person.”

Jason shakes his head. He forces himself to stay still, to keep his voice even. “That’s not how it works, Clint. I’m trash from Crime Alley. Nobody wanted me, either. You don’t have to be good to do this. You just have to do it. I’ll show you.”

Clint wavers, eyes dropping down and away. He’s quiet for a long moment and then he nods, slow and uncertain, curling into Jason instead of looking him in the eye, like he’s afraid, if he puts too much weight on the moment, it’ll collapse underneath him. “Yeah,” he says, “okay. I’ll—we can try it. I’ll try.”

Jason wraps his arm around Clint and tugs him in, pulls him until he’s sprawled half on top of him.

It won’t be easy or simple or free from significant, life-altering fuck-ups. He knows. He remembers. But Clint’s better natured than he ever was. And Jason’s smart enough to learn from mistakes that get him killed. All they have to do, he thinks, is not leave each other.

Lying there, with Clint warm and sleepy beside him, already reaching to sneak pizza in the middle of their moment, Jason thinks _don’t leave_ feels like the kind of promise he can keep. 

**Author's Note:**

> For fic updates and more unusual AUs, follow me on [tumblr](https://thepartyresponsible.tumblr.com/).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] The Wreck of Doubt](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21842398) by [miri_tiazan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miri_tiazan/pseuds/miri_tiazan)




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